Dogs VS Chickens: Round 4

Thursday and Friday, our auction chickens gave us 3 eggs/day. The Pony is excited. He wants to check for eggs every couple of hours, which must surely be inconvenient for the chickens, what with just getting settled to squeeze one out when here comes a young 'un swinging an Easter basket to shoo them off their uncomfortable wooden coffin. Except for one. She lays outside, on a metal shelf. Every time The Pony enters the chicken compound, he is careful not to let any of our prisoners escape. Survivor, the rooster, crows at The Pony, but leaves him alone. Yes. Survivor got his crow back.

Farmer H is not so good with the chickens. On Thursday, he checked on them before joining the #1 son and me at the Top Ten Percent Academic Banquet. Farmer H reported that when he entered the chicken pen, a hen got out the door, and Survivor jumped at him and clawed at his belly. Which was an ample target for Survivor. I despise a floggin' rooster, but we ain't puttin' him in a pot. Farmer H said Survivor was mad because he blocked the door, and wouldn't let Survivor out to retrieve his hen. Farmer H recaptured that chicken-brained fool, and put her back.

At the banquet, Basementia Buddy's son heard the story, and asked, "Do you know how to break a rooster of that?" And Farmer H said, "Well, I kick him like a football, and that works pretty good." The boy said, "You have to raise him from a chick." Which did not seem like very good advice, or even a good riddle, really, because Survivor is already a grown-a$$ rooster, not a chick.

Yesterday afternoon, The Pony and I were lolling about the living room, watching TV with no electricity, lazing away the day listening to the hum of the generator. Then we heard Survivor crowing. He sounded agitated. Next, we heard Farmer H bellowing, "Grizzly! GRIZZLY! GRIZZLY!!! Which is not really the way to make a dog stop what it's doing, being as how you teach a dog it's name to come when you call it. I have already told you of the time when Farmer H gave Grizzly a lecture, rather than just shouting, "NO! Bad dog!" That always works for me. The dog tucks in his tail and slinks away out of shame.

The Pony ran out onto the porch, then down through the front yard. It seems that Farmer H had once again proven why he will never be hired as a corrections officer, having let another hen fly the coop. Survivor was going nuts, watching Grizzly snatch up his hen and run under Farmer H's truck. Farmer H could not get the dog out, nor the chicken out of the dog's mouth. The Pony crawled partway under the truck, and the dog dropped the chicken and ran out. Then Farmer H and The Pony performed an intricate dance routine round and round the F-250 until the chicken came out. It was bleeding from bites to the back, but Farmer H tossed it back into the general population, no doubt to be pecked back into the pecking order. Survivor chased it around for good measure.

The lone casualty: the second egg of the day, broken by Farmer H in his haste to rescue the hen.