Posted on 04/07/2016 12:11:07 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Lighten up.
In the 1950’s, one of my close friends grew up in a semi-rural area, and his family raised chickens in the back yard.
My friend came down with ocular histoplasmosis, which is a fungus that thrives in soil mixed with bird droppings.
He permanently lost half the vision in one eye.
^^^This!!^^^
I had chickens and ducks.
I loved them both but the ducks were smarter.
I raised the ducks in the kitchen until they were old enough to go outside and they viewed me as their “mommy”.
One night, the Dobes of that time set up a commotion and I ran outside, wondering what was going on.
Here came my ducks running up the lane, screaming, with a skunk in hot pursuit.
I flung the door open and yelled “DUCKS!” and they raced inside with the skunk mere steps behind.
I barely got the door shut before *it* could come in, too and there was a horrible THUD as it hit the closing door.
The ducks huddled around my feet “whimpering”.
We all slept together in the kitchen that night, because the skunk was outside, scratching the door and that terrified them.
I woke up in a pile of ducks the next morning.
They stayed way over against the wall when I opened the door to see if the skunk had gone and I had to go out and in several times before they believed he really was.
Thankfully, the skunk never came back.
I miss those ducks.
I taught my chickens tricks, so they were not entirely stupid.
Can’t have either now as the infernal chicken hawks...oh, sorry Sacred Redtail Hawks are now protected and they’re scads of them, killing everything that moves.
I cannot imagine penning fowl up in a coop.
I tended my dad’s chickens after he died.
They went crazy every time they saw me coming towards their pen.
The two smallest hens would rush over to me and crouch down so that I could stroke their backs.
I loved them.
After about 3 months, my mom gave them away.
:(
The domestic chicken is a not-so-distant variant of east asian jungle foul. They are designed to survive on insects and various things in a humid bamboo thicket.
Dad had a rooster that the whole family was terrified of.
He’d attack them all when they dared to walk out into the yard.
I always had my Dobes with me and he would just stand off in the corner, glaring at me and muttering to himself.
Never touched me.
:D
Kinda hard to make your entire property a no-fly zone for every other bird [and bat] on earth.
Chickens also have incredible visual acuity.
Rats have a hard time making out shapes past fifteen feet. Chickens can spot the licence plate on a beetle at 75 ft, run up, grab it, and eat it, faster than it took me to type this sentence.
We had fried chicken last night. Was tasty.
Your #24..is that Huma?
Johnny Depp/Dark Shadows, speaking of the “woman singer”, Alice Cooper.
THANKS, for posting your “fowl” experiences with your feathered friends. One of the best I have ever read on FR.
*blush*
I start yapping and can’t shut up.
;D
Reminds me of my salad days.
Chickens are a gateway animal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrTBSLesW7I
Yes, I should have recognized him.
Btw, in 1993 or 1994 the SyFi channel aired two original thirty minute DS films every morning. All 1,225 episodes. The first 210 episodes were black/white.
You said: “By default is a place I wouldn’t live in the first place. “
Bingo! We have a winner.
(I don’t have chickens, my brother has 100+)
This past winter, because of age and laziness, I got too fat and atrophied for my own taste, so I decided to turn my garden over with a garden fork
Of course, the chickens were right there to snatch any worms that got overturned.
I was surprised to see that the clumps of the fork turning really were scratched down after a day or two rest in between fork workouts
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