We have chickens!
I have been meaning to do a post about our little bird herd for awhile now, but stuff kept getting in the way. We have 6 hens and a little bantam rooster.
Let me introduce them:
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| (left to right: O-Joe the Rooster, Poppy, Marigold, Rose, and Lily...missing from photo Posy and Iris) |
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| (left to right: Poppy, Lily, Posy, Iris, Rose) |
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| O-Joe and Marigold |
We have had our trials and tribulations,
for example;
when they were just young whipper-snappers, I caught them vandalizing the house
but none of the previous trials compare to what happened just this week...
We were at home when a dog wandered into our yard. The dog was cute and sweet. It was some type of beagle mix. I was willing to let the dog hang around until it decided to go home until...
It took off after the chickens. The dog caught and attacked Lily. Meanwhile, Ainsley is crying and screaming, Kevin is running out of the house to help, I am reaching into a strange dogs mouth to pry out a chicken (smart move I know). Lily stands up and runs away as I pry the dogs mouth off of her. Lily runs under our van, the dog gets away and manages to get a hold of her again under the van, where we can't get to them. The kids have disappeared from sight, although I still hear shrieks from Ainsley and words of worry from Lincoln. After what seemed like minutes but must have only been seconds, we finally (really Kevin, but I like to say 'we' because I want some glory) finally get the dog out from under the van. It appears that the dog never made it through Lily's fluff to do any real damage. Kevin looks around and yells for the kids to go and get a collar we can put on the dog, but finds no kids until...high-up, above the entire scene, sitting on top of a Toyota Sienna are the brave 8 and 6 year old.
We get the dog on a leash and put it in the back of the truck with 'responsible citizen' plans of taking the dog to animal control. Afterall, the dog is nice (except to chickens) and I am sure at this point she will be adopted by a loving family. Then we start to think, "Where is animal control in our little Dade County?" I call my MIL, who calls the only number there is to call, our county's equivalent of 911. She and I both end up calling only to be told that no one really knows where animal control is located(or they were being evasive and just not telling us). Well, the dispatch lady tells us to "Park by the gazebo and a city cop will be out in a minute." (small town instructions- everyone knows where the gazebo is) Fifteen minutes later the cop shows up. We tell him the dog is not ours (while the dog devotedly lays her head on our arms) and that it attacked our chickens. He in a joking way suggests we keep it and if we feed it it won't attack our chickens. I in a joking way suggest he keep the dog since he doesn't have chickens. I am pretty sure he thought his joke was funnier. In the end he says they only call animal control for aggressive dogs (as this mutt sweetly nuzzles our hands) and this one is clearly not aggressive.
So what do you do in a small county, full of irresponsible pet owners and low on resources for stray pets? Well, I am not going to tell you what we did (I plead the 5th), but I am sure that dog has a nice, loving family now.
As an end to the evening Kevin (reflecting back on the 2 young children perched atop the van) gives the kids a great lesson in helping out and being there to save things they care about. As a mom, I was thoroughly impressed by their self-preservation skills (and tell them so), to haul themselves up out of harms way on top of a 6 foot high minivan and am still perplexed by exactly how that feat was accomplished.
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