preocupada na madrugada (worry at dawn)
Among The Roosters, Sharks vs. Jets
Friday
This weekend is Operation Relocation for Henelts. Time to fly to the coop, babies, we told them. They’re ready; the best part of their day is their romp outside, and once back inside they sit with their beaks pressed against the window watching the roosters strut to and fro in the front courtyard. Now that Jeannie is big enough to survive the autumnal temperatures, we’re ready to move the four henlets to the coop. After a week or so of them eating side by side to, but separated from, the rest of the flock, we’ll finish fencing the rest of the coop1 so they can have the entire courtyard, which is about thirty feet across. Then it will be up to them to manage the large amounts of rooster attention they are destined to receive - but that’s a ways off.
Over the past few days the henlets have been spending progressively more time in the coup courtyard during the daylight hours - we created a henlet run for them that gives them lots of space while keeping the roosters behind chicken wire, searching desperately for a way in. The three rooms of the stone building that is the chicken coop have been cleaned and power washed. New wood chips are on the floor, there are multiple roosts, high and low. There’s even a chair with a blanket on it, a nod to their history of sitting on indoor furniture. There are nesting boxes too, though the henlets are not yet laying Princess Leia is probably only a month away from that.
Holes in the wall and roof are mostly plugged up - not 100% water tight but predators can’t enter. I went up today right after a heavy rainstorm, and the sloped and well-draining concrete floor was already dry.
The henlets love their chicken run, especially where a tall door leans in the corner, they like to all gather in its hidden shade and peck. The first time I walked up to the coop I got scared because I didn’t see the henlets pecking about in their run. OK maybe they are inside, I thought, breaking into a run. The roosters that constantly trail me broke into a run with me. The sight of us suddenly bursting into the empty, quiet chicken coop courtyard startled the henlets from behind the door - spotting me they came to the entrance of the run, but when I did not produce sliced blueberries and apples they went back to being hens, which they have quickly become expert at.
Saturday
Tonight is the first night the orphan hens will stay in the chicken coop overnight. It’s been very rainy today, but every time I visited the henlets in their new kingdom they were too busy pecking and scratching to pay much attention to me once they verified I wasn’t bearing blueberries or watermelon or peanuts (their favorite snacks). Cher permitted the h to hold her, while Princess Leia snuggled against me making little goose-like honking sounds. She’s been a daily presence in my life since April, living the first month of her life on my shoulder or perched on my wrist. But I know: she is big enough to live like a chicken, she wants to be outside, and she’s safe enough in the coop.
Still, I was feeling miserable with anxiety and as we held their little feathery boat bodies all sleepy in our arms, I saw the tiniest movement. Moving only my eyes I located it - a nose and whiskers poking out of a hole in the back wall of the roost room, just opposite the place where I’d set a roof tile down in the middle of the floor with a handful of granola crumbs to tempt the henlets inside. I had figured they’d like the sugar especially with the chillier weather but they pecked with blase curiosity and then went back outside to scratch the dirt for bugs like proper hens.
Mr. Rato Jr, though, was very interested in the granola. As we stood there, still as could be, he poked his little nose out once, twice, a third time. Speaking mostly with hand signals and whispers so low they didn’t even wake Princess Leia dozing in my arms, the h mimed returning to the quinta for his air gun, sleeping bag and a chair, which he did, and then spent the next few hours staking out the rat hole. The h: man of action! (and love for little henlets). Bye bye Mr. Rato.
If it pours down rain tonight (we’ve had some short hard burts of rain today) I hope I sleep through it or I’ll have to talk myself out of going up to check on them. I already have their food prepared for the morning.
In other flock news: Sierra Nevada is laying one egg a day. If Betty White is laying, I haven’t found where yet. Sierra lays in the pampas grass, just inside the front gate, where the steps break away to either side. of a central garden where we are cultivating cana lilies and birds of paradise. We have promised Alberto we will remove the pampas, which he derides as a junk plant, and replant it in the campo… but now that plan has to wait ‘til little Sierra decides to upgrade her nesting address.
We almost touched off a gang war among the roosters, which are members of two distinct flocks2: the eastern flock (the Jets) contains 8 core members (including Sean the Braun Cassidy, One Eyed Leif Garrett, Jackson Pollock, and Big Al Capone) with 3 occasional members (Stanley, Justin Bieberoo, Jack Black. The eastern gaang hangs out in the campo, the quinta gardens, the apple orchard, Lower Olive Tree Road, and the Jacaranda garden.
The southern flock - the Sharks - contains 19 roosters, most notably Alphonse and Potsy who allow themselves to be held and enjoy sitting on our laps. It also contains those ruffians that comprise the Italian gang. The southern flock hangs out variously in the Secret Garden, the swimming pool area, the fruit orchard, picnic flats and of course the chicken coop.
When we first arrived, there was a water leak at the foot of the cottage steps; water trickled and pooled there, not a lot, but enough to keep the flock alive during the crispy Portuguese summers. We’ve long since plugged up the leak, but the area has retained its detente status, a kind of Switzerland for chickens, a place where both flocks can mingle without squabbling.
But, we learned, there are clear lines that cannot be crossed: as we left the carport the southern flock streamed after us, but just outside the gate, just past the point of the old watering hole, they all stopped dead in their tracks.
The eastern flock, standing at the entrance to the campo and seeing the southern flock about to penetrate its territory, rushed over. They stopped dead at the middle of the driveway and would not step over the invisible line they were obeying..and began crowing. ALL of them. All at once, like a box of alarm clocks. Obviously they were singing When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way to your dying day-aaaay-aaay-aaay-aaaaaaaaaaaay!
The southern flock stood stock still, wanting to follow the Feeder In Chief (me) but also as Sharks not wanting to take any shit from the Jets, so naturally not retreating into the carport just yet. Finally Mr. T stepped forward, ruffling his neck. One Eyed Leif of the Jets stepped forward to meet him, and they lowered their heads and stared hard at each other and World War III was on the cusp, I tell you, but then Mr. T saw something to the left and walked over to see what it was and One Eyed Leif saw something to the right and took a look as well, and just like that the war was over before it began, the Sharks strutting back to their territory in the Secret Garden, reputations intact, and the Jets escorting me up Lower Olive Tree Lane, acting all triumphant.
Sunday
I went to bed at 1:30a last night which is relatively early for me. There were no thundershowers late at night, and I only woke a couple of times, each time talking myself out of walking up to the coop with a headlamp to have a look-see. This morning I awoke an hour earlier than usual even with the time change, hope and anxiety already frothing in my stomach. I waited with little grace for the h to take his shower, then we walked very fast to the coop, me muttering oh please please please please let them be okay under my breath the whole way. Jake sensed our anxiety and loped along next to us.
Once through the carport gate, the entire southern flock rose from their spots in the garden where they’d been laying around getting some morning sun and waiting for the Feeder In Chief (me) to appear. They followed me in a feathery crowd to the coop with Jake walking slowly in their midst. For a moment they looked to me like a bunch of teenagers walking a parade route, proudly escorting their amazingly realistic Labrador homecoming parade float. But then Jake took a big poo, scattering the roosters and spoiling the illusion.
I know the h wanted to reach the coop first in case something…happened, he could warn me away. I hung back, scared. What if we missed a fox-sized hole somewhere - what if the fox found a way in after all? Last night was fox weather for sure - our game camera has shown us that the fox that plagues our flock is most often prowling during a light drizzle, between 1a and 3a. That’s been the nightly weather around here for a few weeks now.
But the babies are fine!
They ran to the closed door of the coop when they heard the h, and swarmed him when he opened the door to their run and set down their big dish of blueberries, apples and sunflower seeds. When I appeared they briefly congregated at my feet to see if I had more food but when I didn’t they went back to picking the plate clean and scratching about showing off their new hen expertise.
They ignored me as I greeted and caressed each one in turn. Princess Leia is so striking with her white feathers salted among the burn caramel and black markings. Cher is sleek and dark, her red comb and wattle a healthy red, her face as pretty as a kewpie doll. I Dream of Jeannie is still the wide-eyed youngster of the four; I wonder if last night there was a feathery kerfluffle of re-arranging as Jeannie tried, as she always does, to get ‘unders’. Yella Amarella is now a beautiful titian-haired young lady. If I met her now, I’d likely name her Nancy Drew.
We inspected the coop and based on the guano map all chickens leave behind, concluded they spent part of their time on the low roost, part of the time at the mesh window that looks out on the courtyard, and part of their time on the blanket-covered chair.
I’ll feel a lot better when the new netting for the top of the run arrives - we’ve seen two birds of prey fly overhead. It’s doubtful they saw the henlets, who saw the crucifix shape of doom way high in the sky and hustled behind the door. The brand new net the h ordered that we tried to put up is in the dumpster - it’s not on fire only because the h stopped me from rage-pouring gasoline on it and ignoring it. We spent more than an hour trying to get the dastardly thing untangled from itself, from brambly bits of branches, leaves and clods of dirt, from snags on the rough textured walls and calcadas. Before we could start turning our rage on each other (which was clearly the plan of the net manufacturers, to destroy marriages) the h detected the satanic nature of the thing and wisely said I’m calling it, we’re trashing this, I’m getting a different solution.
The chicken coop courtyard is walled all around but over time, the wall that is on the side that looks down on the swimming pool has tumbled down the hillside.
Once upon a time the eastern flock included three hens, while the southern flock boasted ten, but over the past 11 months the stupid fox has killed all but two - Betty White and Sierra Nevada - who hang out only among the southern flock. The four orphan henlets are all that’s left of the hens of the southern flock, and we raised them by hand inside the house until they were all old enough to live together outside.
When I raised chickens, they were always entertaining. For some reason they liked pecans and if I was sitting on the ground under the pecan tree, they would all come over and keep scratching the ground around me till I started cracking pecans and feeding them.