As I write this, a little hen watches me from the other side of the room. In a minute she will flap up to perch on the lid of my laptop and lean over to stare into my eyes and attempt, with mind control, to get me to chop up a slice of cucumber for her. Meet I Dream of Jeannie, my house hen.
It all started with Eddie Haskell, a six month old rooster. Eddie has four siblings (Freddy, Neddy, Teddy and Schwetty) and they are known as those Haskell Rascals. Though rascal is far too polite a word for these pubescent monstros com penas1. The Haskells are five roos from Sierra Nevada’s peep.
All of the chicks of Sierra’s peep are a little wild like their mama who grew up in the Secret Garden with the feral flock that came with the property and is still living there. She has grudgingly accepted sleeping in the safety of the coop, regular feedings, and privacy to raise her chicks but if I try to pet her she will scoot away from me with a sharp rebuke.
In contrast, Jeannie was raised in the palaceta from the age of two weeks, when her mama (Stella) and five of her nestmates were killed by a fox. Jeannie grew up perching on me, the h and Jake, and would often gaze at my face for long periods, her thoughts (you don’t look at ALL like me) plain on her beaky little face.
Jeannie is tame as a kitten. She loves to be cuddled, and the eight surviving pintainhos of her first peep do too…Fuzzy Zoeller, Delta Dawn, Tiny Little Tina, Pie, Cake, Dottie and Falcon - all except Snowman who is bit of an a-hole but a good roo and the self-designated chefe of his portion of the coop.
Lesson: chicks will behave as their mama demonstrates they should behave. A wild hen cannot be unwilded, and her children will be as wild as she is.
Okay, okay, I tell Jeannie. I close my laptop and rise to do her bidding. You are so cute! I tell her as she comes tap-tapping after me in excitement, telescoping her neck and cocking her head in a very human-like way.
Jake might be a smidge jealous, hearing the h and I talk to Jeannie in the ‘special voice’ that is usually reserved for him. That voice will bring him wagging over to wherever we are playing with Jeannie and start clowning for a treat, to distract us from this pesky little sister he thought had been safely re-homed to the coop but is now invading his space in the garden apartment where we currently occupy the lower unit.
As for Jeannie, she remembered Jake immediately, making her little hen scream of happiness when I picked up his food bowl to hold it for him (Prince Jake has decided that when someone holds the bowl, the food just tastes better). Anyone who thinks chickens are dumb has never spent time with them; Jeannie clearly remembered her time as a chick in the palaceta, immediately flapping up to alight on the edge of Jake’s bowl as in days of yore, darting her head in and out between his gnashing jaws to spear pedacos of blueberry.
Sometimes we will cook up a chicken breast and cut it up in pieces and mix into Jake’s food; to my horror Jeannie quite enjoys snatching the chicken bits out of Jake’s lunch, so yeah we don’t do that anymore.
Her delight in blueberries is a bit gruesome - she thinks they are flies. When she was a chick, we felt bad about her indoor life but the coop was still a disaster. We tried to give her a normal chick life, even catching insects for her. Because she thought we were her parents, she followed us and learned quickly that when we had a fly swatter in hand, a snack was on the way.
Buzz! went the fly. Whap! went the fly swatter.. Pitterpatterpitterpatterpitterpatter! Jeannie’s little dinosaur feet were a blur as raced over to the fly with a little scream of excitement. BWOCK! To this day if I pick up a swatter she will come running full speed to see what’s on the menu.
Problem was, flies stop flying around at night. I solved this by cutting up a blueberry and offering the bits to the chicks, who were properly fooled, a dead fly and an eighth of a blueberry being approximately the same color, size and juiciness.
It wasn’t long before Jeannie and her fellow orphan chicks figured when I picked up Jake’s food bowl, blueberry chopping was about to commence in the kitchen. If one even heard the faint ting of my fingernail against the aluminum of Jake’s food bowl, the jig was up and the four pintainhos would race into the kitchen and jump up and down around my feet attempting to fly up to the cutting board to snag blueberries. It kind of cracked me up to think that in their little bloodthirsty chicken brains I was hacking up flies that were still oozing fly body fluids (do flies bleed?) when I dropped the pieces on the floor for the pintainhos to fight over.
As they got larger it felt wrong to keep them in the house, but they were not yet old enough to roost in the coop, which still required a lot of concrete patchwork and a chicken run. So we compromised, moving over the Garden House and letting the chicks have the run of the palaceta. They liked it, but could often be seen gazing longingly out a third story window at the roosters in the palaceta courtyard far below. Who ARE those guys? their expressions seemed to say.
They loved their outdoor time; when I entered the palaceta I’d hear their squawks of excitement and the patter of their dinosaur feet as they ran down the third floor hallway, then the whirring of their wings as they glided down the staircase from the third floor to the second, from the second floor to the first. They would race each other, skidding as they swooped out the door and running straight to the garden outside.
Visiting friends gave us side eye for letting our chickens have run of the house, but it wasn’t so bad. Except for the time they ate the braids of onions hanging in the pantry - which wasn’t bad, just naughty and they stunk of onion until they dust bathed the smell away. One set of friends decided to help around the quinta by sweeping up all the chicken poop. I had given up on keeping up with the job, figuring I’d just do a big clean once they were moved to the coop. The chicks were still pretty small so if you stayed abreast of the poop on the daily, it wasn’t too bad. Then again my bar for ‘bad’ is much lower than it has ever been - using a toilet that only ‘flushes’ by pouring a bucket of water into the bowl and mostly eating food that can be prepared on a camping stove for more than a year has a way of making you zen about smaller inconveniences like chicks eating a year’s worth of onions.
Mostly they stayed wherever we were, especially me as I was the source of food. They enjoyed their mid-morning nap on Jake, and a mid-afternoon nap on the h. When they got tired of wandering around, or it became close to mealtime they’d perch on my shoulders or on the lid to my laptop. If a visitor was chill enough (like our friend Steve) they’d cluster on an arm or laptop and hang. Sometimes while laptop roosting they’d peck at the screen. I wasn’t sure they were actually seeing anything until I put on video of a hawk circling in the sky and they squawked loudly and ran away.
We looked up You Tube videos on sexing chicks and determined all four of our orphans were hens. Wow! Yay! We high fived at our luck. Then Princess Leia crowed, so became Han Solo (he still answers to Princess Leia, though). Black Haired Cher is now Chaz, and. Yella Amarela is now Yello Amarelo. Our hopes for a domesticated flock were all pinned on I Dream of Jeannie’s tiny box kite body.
When the day came to put them in the refurbished coop it was with mixed feelings we left them. You can laugh but it was clear from their anxious sounds and the way they clustered around our legs they were saying “Take us back, we don’t like it here.”
Gradually they settled into their coop routine. It wasn’t long before Jeannie disappeared for a few days and I was frantic, sure a fox had day-hunted her. We searched and searched but found no sign of her. On the fourth morning she appeared for breakfast, surly and taking no shit from the three roosters who meekly gave her her space. I waited to see where she was headed after breakfast - clearly she was sitting on a clutch of eggs - but she somehow slipped away while I was stopping Yella and Han from mounting Chaz, who was and has remained the most laid back of the orphan roos.
The h discovered Jeannie’s nest with eleven eggs while he was weed whacking the hillside where a massive fig tree grows up and over the coop. Jeannie was tucked in at the base, under a lattice of branches that kept her safe from attacks from above (the preferred method of foxes). I wedged an umbrella over the space so she would have some protection from the spring rains. When her peep hatched I clambered down and popped the babies into a laundry basket. Jeannie made a fuss til we put her in the basket too.
Sierra had her peep around the same time - five roos and four hens. Unlike Jeannie’s cuddly babies, Sierra’s were as wary of me as their mama - my plan to domesticate them through handling them was not a plan at all, as it turns out. They remained suspicious and evaded me, never mind that I was The Bringer of Food at Predictable Intervals.
Jeannie was a year younger than Sierra and raised in the palaceta with no hen role models but was nonetheless a stalwart mama, providing fierce protection to her brood until they became too leggy to fit under her tiny body, and then with no fanfare at all she flew up to the roost on her side of the coop and declared motherhood over. I’ve done my job, was her attitude. Now it’s me time.
But peace was not to be had. The Haskells hit puberty and went gonzo for sex, constantly harassing Jeannie and Sierra — even in places where adult roos typically offer hens some solitude - the roosting bar and the nesting box are understood to be allee-allee-in-free places, but the stupid Haskells don’t care and were constantly trying to pull the hens from their boxes by yanking at the feathers on the sides of their sweet little heads. It got bad enough that Jeannie and Sierra took to hiding high in the branches of the fig tree to avoid them and had to be coaxed into the coop at night, when I’d fend off the Haskells as they tried to jump on the girls before they ascended to the roost. Both hens had been regular layers once their peeps were independent, but under the predations of the Haskells, egg production stopped completely.
Eventually the randy roos plucked all the feathers from Jeannie’s head and she was left with a little Mohawk on the top of her head, the sides and back clean shaven. It is disconcerting, her naked pink chicken skinned head rising from her still-full neck feathers - she looks like a baby vulture.
One morning, chased by the Haskells, she flew up onto my shoulder when I was readying to leave the chicken coop courtyard. I kissed her and put her down and she flew up to the other shoulder. When I put her down again she said fine, we’ll walk and shadowed me down the pool house steps and the gravel pathway past the fruit orchard, where Justin Bieberoo was hanging around with Jack Black. They espied Jeannie and came running, making sounds of disbelief - since the fox killed all but two hens in the Secret Garden, the ladies have been in short supply, and sighting an unknown hen is what passes for a newsworthty event at Casa dos Galos.
Jeannie hollered at their approach and flew up onto my head. OKAY, I told her. You can come with me.
That’s how I started bringing Jeannie down to the Casa de Jardim, where we currently live in the lower unit which features a massive stone patio and a double decker garden. Earlier this summer Shaun “the Braun” Cassidy was attacked by a neighborhood dog, injuring his leg, so we set up a little chicken run for him lest the other roos of the eastern flock decide to use his weakness as a chance to permanently challenge Shaun’s authority, which is wholly size-based. Shaun stayed in his private hospital for a week, and then hopped past me one day as I changed his water, none the worse for wear although he has developed a comical toy-soldier way of walking to disguise his weakness from the other roos. Roos are unforgiving to their bullies - more on that later.
The idea was that Jeannie could hang around her run by day dust bathing, eating snacks and being ogled by Jackson Pollock, who has developed an indefatigable crush on her. When it was time to close the coop I’d carry her up and place her on the roost bar. For awhile this worked; the Haskells seemed to not quite realize Jeannie had flown in under the radar. But after awhile they DID notice her, and the shenanigans began again. If I wasn’t there, they’d mount her, tearing inexpertly at the feathers on her head and back to get a grip. If I was there, Jeannie would run from them to stand between my feet, while I’d throw my arms behind my body, squat and glare at the roos who would swerve away in terror.
The h and I agreed she needed to stay in her private run until her little head and back feathers had fully regrown. And when it became totally clear that Jeannie was never not going to not be harassed in the coop - the Haskells saw her as nothing but a fluffy little sex-ready target - we reluctantly decided, something had to be done about the Haskells. People use the word cull, but what we are talking about is killing, so let’s call it what it is. Em Portugues, assassinar.
I pointed out the problematic roos to the h, who began scouting sniper positions around the pool and Picnic Flats, where the Haskells liked to forage and squabbled amongst themselves.
Meanwhile Jeannie’s plans differed a tad from ours. She would tolerate being in her run for a few hours, but after awhile she clearly felt the pressure of a trio of roos from the Eastern flock - Jackson, Big Al Capone and Larry Laryngitis - and thought, maybe these guys are nicer, and I could, you know, forage with them. Chicken wire is supposed to keep chickens out (or in) but Jeannie is so small she found a few openings that were large enough to squeeze through. To no one’s surprise but her own, the eastern flock roos were be on her like a flash.
No matter how much we reinforced the run, Jackson Pollock could be seen walking the perimeter, appearing to suggest to Jeannie just where she should try next. Sometimes when she escaped she’d stick around the garden foraging and dust bathing with Jackson towering over her, threatening the other roos with a drubbing.
Once, she strolled into the house all nonchalant. Did you bring Jeannie in? I asked the h. No, he said. Jeannie hopped up on the rocking chair where we are temporarily storing a fluffy blanket, made herself a nest and settled in, clucking to herself. Ten minutes later she hopped down and briskly tapped over to Jake’s food bowl to explore for blueberry scraps, her entire mien like a busy office worker communicating One more item checked off the list! We checked the blanket and found a small, oval, pinkish egg. Before we could quite decide where she’d sleep that night she solved hte problem by flapping up to the top of a wardrobe and settling in for the night.
The next day she went back to the run, but Jeannie had a taste of house hen-dom and knew what must be done. I happened to be there when she found a new way to escape the run, flying up to the top of her run and perching on the chicken wire - not an easy feat for her dainty chicken feet. Once up there, she didn’t quite dare fly down, as Shaun and Larry and Leif and a few of the anonymous roos of the eastern flock had gathered, waiting for her descent so they could pounce. I could hear her anxious clucking as I came up Lower Olive Tree Lane, but didn’t see her anywhere.
As I descended the steps I glanced up just in time to see her launch herself right at me. I quickly spread my arms like a scarecrow and she landed with all the grace and aplomb of a bald eagle, which she kinda resembles in her bald-headed glory. The h put some netting on the top of the run after that.
Later I returned from cleaning the coop to find the run empty. I saw the gap she’d slipped through…but where was Jeannie? I finally found her in the campo, standing next to a very proud and tall-standing Jackson Pollock, who was apparently making their relationshing Instagram official. When the big bully One Eyed Leif Garrett came over to check out the new galinha Jackson thrashed him good, and I swear you could hear the other roosters crowing in schaudenfreude. I didn’t blame them, it took me months before I could get Leif to stop chasing me and pecking me. You can laugh, but it’s only funny when it’s not you.
I clambered over the wall and fetched her and she protested only mildly. Jackson followed me, and Jeannie leaned her bald head around my arm to shrug and explain Sorry Jackie my love is real but they have AIR CONDITIONING.
So that’s how I Dream of Jeannie went from being an orphan to a house hen to a coop hen to a new mama and now is back to being a house hen, at least until the feathers on her head grow back. She has her routine down pat: every night she puts herself to bed roosting on the headboard of our bed, which we’ve pulled back from the wall so that she has room for her tail to hang over the floor, where we’ve placed a mattress pad for incontinence to catch any droppings.
In the morning she hops down and squawks for her breakfast, and has to be discouraged from flying up to the cutting board to personally supervise as I chop up cucumbers, grapes and lettuce.
After breakfast she is put in her run with fresh water, and the Eastern roos spend the morning and afternoon hanging about her pen trying to convince her she can escape again if only she’d just try. At around 4p we bring her into the house, and she taps contentedly around our small apartment, her little chicken feet making a sound like tiny high heels on the wood floor, searching for insects and sticking her naked little chicken neck into every corner of the room and just generally being a house hen.
If it’s an egg laying day she’ll sequester herself into the fluffy blanket on the rocking chair, her little naked head poking out and swiveling around to ensure all is safe. After ten minutes, egg laid, she’ll jump down and follow me around the house hoping for snacks. If the Roomba cruises past, she might hop on for a minute before napping in a patch of sun on the corner of the bed while Jake snoozed close by.
After dinner, if the h and Jake sit on the couch to watch CNN she will sit between them, looking like a tiny bald-headed feather canoe. At 7:30p sharp she will jump down and tap tap tap her way into the bedroom and fly up to her perch on the headboard, where she’ll groom herself for five minutes and then slowly sink to sit on her own feet and sleep.
Meanwhile, I made a profile of each of the Haskells for the h to consider. Eddie is a nervous wreck and a pure follower, Freddy is a sidekick type, but Schwetty and Neddy were alpha a-holes, always keeping Sierra trapped in the fig tree as she waits for a good time to enter the coop to roost. Teddy is the largest Haskell, also the most violent and has a look in his eye I do not like. He often shoots his neck out and grabs one of Jeannie’s younger hens by the head, attempting to yank her under him; the distressed squawking of the hen brings all the Haskells piling on. It’s a terrible thing to see and hear, the protesting hen literally disappearing under tsunami of flapping roos.
Knowing the Haskells like to forage around the pool area, the h lay hidden like a good sniper does and took Teddy out with his air gun. He came back to the house looking pale, with a shocked expression. I thought they’d all run away when Teddy fell inexplicably dead in their midst but they jumped on him and jus savaged him, he told me. It was…horrible. The h had not expected to take Teddy at that moment, and we were not prepared to prepare him for dinner, so Teddy was disposed of in a way that maybe suited his trashy personality
With Teddy gone, the remaining Haskells were notably less violent toward Sierra and the other hens. When Alberto asked if I would give up a rooster and a hen to his sister, who lost her whole flock last year to bird flu, we gave her Neddy and on of Sierra’s hens, with the agreement that when the hen had a peep, we’d get a little replacement hen out of the deal.
There was a great kerfluffle as Alberto captured Neddy, and for a couple of days the remaining Haskells were frightened and mistrustful of me. The harassment of the hens has mostly stopped - removing the biggest bullies made everyone’s lives better, and the coop courtyard is once again a peaceable kingdom of happy egg-producing hens. On the third day after the meanest Haskells were disappeared, I found SEVEN eggs in the nesting boxes, a clear sign the hens are all feeling more relaxed these days.
The roos of the Eastern flock have figured out that Jeannie lives inside whens he’s not in her run and have taken to hanging about the front and back porch. Larry Laryngitis in particular is never far from the floor to ceiling windows that open onto the back porch, peering in at Jeannie in the hopes of swooping in if Jackson strays too far away.
Never underestimate how fast a roo can run - one day Jeannie stepped onto the back porch where Jake was napping, and Larry covered the distance from Jeannie’s pen to the porch - about 30 yards, in 2 seconds flat. We both screamed and retreated into the house, behind the safety of the double-paned windows. Jeannie bunched up her wings and feathers watching him from behind the glass, looking like a tiny enraged turkey.
You're okay, I tell Jeannie and she settles her feathers and heads to the guest room to watch a little CNN with her boys.
feathered monsters
These are my absolute favourite updates of yours. I love how you write your hens and Roos, you really bring out the character in each of them.
But wow, sex violence and romance. The shocking end of the Haskell ring leader! Jackson Pollock stepping up to defend his lady. I love this tale, may it long continue.
I’ve mentioned before my friend acquired a house hen and she adores her. I’m glad I dream of Jeanie is now feeling safe and laying again. Thank you for sharing.
Woww, this little girl is smart and resilient!
So good that you got the bad roos dealt with. You have become very skilled at evaluating chicken behavior! Your profiling of those Haskells was spot on.
Ugghh, such a gruesome demise for Teddy. Live by ruthless violence, die by the same, evidently.
Amazing what an impact taking out the ringleader has, though!