• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    Sassy. Which is essentially the norm for a spoiled rotten chicken.

    Like, this little hen will scold you for not giving her treats fast enough. And that’s when you’re literally pulling them from a bag and handing them directly to her with no delay

    It’s kinda weird. I always liked birds, but never felt I could care for one properly. I would never have thought of having a chicken as anything but dinner. But now? I’m not sure what in the hell I’ll do without her.

    I didn’t want more animals after my dog died. I was done with losing companions.

    But there was a chicken down the road that needed a home, and we were that only ones available. So we got the first bird. Thought it was a hen (it wasn’t), but keeping one chicken isn’t good for them, they kinda need company. So, we got another one.

    The rooster is pretty big, and very much a punk lol. He beat the crap out of a dog twice his size a few weeks back. But he ain’t really a pet. He’s a chicken that shares space with us, he wasn’t socialized well before we got him.

    But this hen? She was hand raised before us, and was a cuddly little thing for the first few months. Now, she’s all grown up and thinks she’s the boss. She isn’t cuddly, but she insists on being right beside me when she’s inside. Yeah, an inside chicken part time. Only in the evening for a few hours, but still. And she’s gotta be on or beside one of us, usually me.

    She used to lay on my chest and nest in my beard when she was still tiny. She would trill and purr until she’d go to sleep.

    Like, how the hell did this happen?

    And, we now have another hen. Damn thing just showed up in the yard one day with some chicks and started eating. The dog our rooster beat the crap out of killed the chicks before I could get out there.

    But the hen stayed around. She’s tiny. Our first hen is a marans, which aren’t big birds. The volunteer hen is maybe half her size. The volunteer is a feral chicken, one of the few dozen that roam the area. But she’s chill. She’ll hang out with us as long as we don’t try and touch her, just clucking and doing that sweet little trill/purr thing they do.

    So now we’ve got three, and I’m fairly confident that the whole “chicken math” meme isn’t actually a joke, it’s an inevitability.