"Oh, Crap" Day

Today, I would like to call, "Oh, crap" day. For more than one reason. This is because today was finally the day the chickens learned to escape completely from their plastic pool in my garage. They've been liking their tastes of freedom in their coop by day and finally decided they'd had enough of confinement in the pool. I came home from church to find the chicken wire around the pool completely collapsed, and most of our 18 member flock wandering all over the inside of my garage. There were some, apparently, the more obedient, less flighty of the flock, still pecking around inside the pool. The rest had broken loose. And, oh, the poop that was on the floor. Let me give you an education on chicken poop, lest you think that it's all dainty and quaintly packaged, and cute as a fluffy baby chick. Chicken poop is gross. Some of it looks like bird poop, and the rest of it looks like tar, and is as sticky. And it stinks! When our hens were babies, I got pooped on once or twice. They were tiny fluffy adorable baby chicks, so I easily forgave them for pooping on my hand. Well, now that they're almost a month and a half old, I've gotten chicken poop on my hands, on my arms, on my legs, my feet, my clothes. And today, in addition to those places eventually, there was chicken poop all over the garage floor too. Quite appropriately, my first thought upon seeing it was, "Oh, crap!" And this time, I didn't forgive them so easily. They're not cute baby chicks anymore. I knew that if I left the poop in the garage, the garage would stink, it would attract flies, and if I let it dry, it would be harder to get off. The first task was to catch all the chickens and move them to their coop. Most of the escapees freaked out, like they always do, at the prospect of being caught (even though I always take them to their large and comfy coop- a better place than the pool- they just seem not to remember this) and some jumped back into the pool, maybe to try to get back on my good side. Unfortunately, I had no good side at this point. The rest, I went slipping and sliding through chicken tar poo as I chased them around the garage to take them outside. At one point I had the not so brilliant idea that maybe I could just herd them to the door of the coop from the garage. After chasing one errant chicken all over the yard, I gave up that idea and went to the tried and true method: trapping/catching them in a bucket. Once they were all safely deposited outside in their coop, I removed everything from my garage and turned on the hose and washed everything down. It took me a long time and all the while I was thinking about Chick Fil-A, KFC, and McNuggets. I think they'll live long enough to lay some eggs for us if they don't get killed by predators, or worse, by me.

This chicken escape plan has been in the works for a while now. They've been plotting and planning, I'm sure, for a while now, just like in Chicken Run. You see, I've seen them make trial runs of various components of their plan: this whole week, I've watched them flap their wings to give them lift enough to reach the top of the chicken wire. Then, they could be seen sitting on top of the chicken wire. Well, enough of them learn to do that, especially if they were smart enough to include Big Mama (she's not called Big Mama for nothin'), bingo, the chicken wire collapses and they're all free. I could see it coming. I guess I just hoped that day wouldn't come very soon. I just knew, that one day, I'd come out, and they'd be wandering around my garage with chicken poop all over the floor. That day was today.