Conjuring Chickens and Cutting Horses

One of my guilty secrets is that I love chickens. Not eating them, but the living creatures in all their feathered glory. There are about a zillion varieties of chickens to love. Chickens with pantaloons, chickens with hats and multi-colored ones. I’m sure they all have fancy breed names, but you get my point.

For a moment chickens were trendy. The New York Times ran architecture pieces about snazzy coops and Gwyneth Paltrow extolled their virtues. That time has passed.

                

           But while hipsters have moved on from poultry to goat herding, I’ve remained loyal.  (Who knows what will be the next chic livestock? I’m predicting miniature cows. They are perfect; cute and so unhealthy that they die just as their owners become bored with them.)

Part of my fascination with chickens is that I can’t have any.  Brittanies are bird dogs, and over the years I’ve had eight of them.  Brittanies that is. 

Not all Brittanies are birdie, a pheasant could have landed on Morgan and she wouldn’t have noticed, but Poppy is a hunter. Among the critters she has proudly presented to me are moles, voles, squirrels, rats, a couple of crows and dozens of mice. A chicken wouldn’t stand a chance.

Even if I cooped the birds instead of letting them roam, Poppy would make their lives miserable. She’d sit by their house in a hunting point, just waiting for her opportunity to give them a quick shake and break their necks. Poppy is a very efficient huntress.

One day, while surfing the web instead of writing, I discovered mecca for all poultry lovers: The Murray McMurray Hatchery.  They raise fowl of all types -you want a white Peacock? They got ‘em. Blue Guinea Hen? No problem. An assortment of ducks? One click and it’s on the way.  They ship all over the country.  

Since I’m a good sister, and my brother and sister-in-law have chickens and elaborate set up of electric fencing to keep their dogs at bay, I arranged to have an assortment of chickens sent as a belated birthday present. Unknown to me, McMurray ships by US mail and the chicks went out over a holiday weekend. Needless to say, by the time they reached Andy, it was a gift he’ll never forget.  

Oops.

I did have chickens once. My childhood barn was overrun with Banties. They were cute, and during the winter most birds picked out a horse to sleep on. It was endearing and kept the chickens toasty, but it was it kind of gross to clean when it was time to ride.

For reasons no one seems to remember, we took two chicks homes The second night of having chickens in the city, my father got a phone call from the police. Apparently a  neighbor had complained about our livestock.  Since we had a testy relationship with one of the crustier geezers on the block, this was possible.

The call went on and on, and my dad became more and more furious. They were chicks he kept insisting. The size of hamsters. The cop didn’t budge. Until he did. Tthe “policeman” finally admitted he was punking Dad. Dad had been set up by a former friend. It’s now a part of family lore, but at the time we were concerned for Dad’s health.

Not long after, our experiment with poultry was over and the chickens went back to the barn. Just as no one can remember why we got them, why they left is an equal mystery.

That was my last close encounter with a chicken. Occasionally I’ll moan about it, as was the case recently.  Two friends and I were in the backyard watching the horses and chatting. Jasper the Dane and Kathy’s German Shepard puppy, Damali, were playing while we consumed a fair amount of adult beverages.

                

             “What this place needs is some chickens,” said Maureen.

                

              “I can’t have chickens, I have Poppy,” I said.

                

               “You could try having chickens! They’re so cute. And eggs!” she insisted.

                

                Then, just like Beetlejuice, it appeared in the dusk: a dark red rooster.

                

                I thought I was seeing things. And then a hen showed up.

                

                The horses noticed too and t

hey didn’t like it. While the three humans watched with our mouths hanging open, Dezi, the 26-year old retired jumper started to herd the rooster. Lucy and even 29-year-old Murphy joined in, galloping around the pasture, albeit slowly, after the squawking bird. With the precision of champion cutting horses on a cow, my three retirees moved that rooster around the paddock.

 The hen took a different tack and made a beeline out of the field.

                

             It finally occurred to me that my neighbor had chickens, but not a rooster. Perhaps she’d added to her flock. I went inside to call.

                

               By that time, the hen had caught the attention of the dogs. Kathy leashed Damali at the first sight of the chicken. It never occurred to me to catch Jasper. He’s a Great Dane, not exactly a breed known for their birdiness.

                

                But somewhere in the depths of Jasper’s ancestry was a Dane raised to hunt boar.  Apparently when Jasper spied that hen, his four-month-old brain decided that the hen was a small fluffy pig. By the time Maureen pulled him off the screaming bird he had plucked her chest clean and was going in for the kill.

                

               Much to his dismay, Jasper was quickly dispatched into the house, and I returned with my neighbor. She had bought the birds that very day and was pissed that they were loose. Even buzzed we were slightly smarter than chickens, so we quickly cornered and caught the terrified birds and she took them home.

                

                 I still really want a chicken, but I think if Maureen can conjure things just by saying their names three times, it should be something more interesting than a rooster.

I saw a really cute photo of a wombat the other day...

Just Call Me the Grim Reaper

Every once and a while you read about some Mensa reject who managed to blow up his house by igniting too many flea foggers. I used to laugh at them. Not any more.

Now I understand. Those poor folks have been driven mad by the neverending onslaught of pests that they will literally do anything to rid their place of the plague, even if it means they may destroy their homes.

I envision the homeowner being interviewed on TV. They’re covered with soot but  gleefully proclaiming, “Yeah, the house is gone, but so are the fleas!  Winner!”

Currently I do not have a bug problem. (That sound you hear is me knocking wood, lighting a candle and doing a preventative interpretive dance.)  Actually my problem is worse. I have mice. 

Over the years I’ve grown accustomed to the occasional rodent.  My barn is within spitting distance of the house, and where there is hay and grain, there are mice.  It was never a big problem before. Usually Poppy the Brittany dispatched them quickly, and that was the end of that.

Not this year. I’m not sure if it’s the four-year drought or something else, but word seems to have spread among the mouse population that there’s good eating at the Liveten household. 

It began when I noticed Poppy staring raptly at the kitchen broiler. She sat for hours, watching intently, still as the proverbial mouse.  The next day I noticed that the cover that is supposed to protect the leather couch from dogs was rolled up. When I straightened it, a mouse fell out. It was quite dead.

I was understandable startled and a little grossed out, but I praised Poppy, picked up the mouse with a plastic bag and dumped it in the trash outside. I figured I was done.  I was so naïve.

Poppy was not. That day she was hanging out by the canary flight cage, refusing to budge. After assuring her that there was no mouse, I proudly moved the cage to show her. A mouse tore out. Unfortunately Poppy misjudged her prey and was stalking the rear of the cage while the mouse sprinted to the closet from the front.

Obviously, Poppy needed reinforcements. My cat was useless. Not only is she confined to her own room for her safety, she gave up mousing the day she moved into Chez Liveten.

Killing anything is an anathema to me. I’ve been a vegetarian for more than twenty years. I once hit a pigeon with my car and it still haunts me. But this was getting ridiculous. I kept thinking I saw mice everywhere. Maybe I was.

In general I like rodents. I had hamsters and gerbils as a kid, and I think mice are adorable. Where they belong. In their natural habitat. Which is outside.

At the store I by-passed the disgusting snap traps and the inhumane glue boards. Instead I shelled out $29 for a wee little wire have-a-heart trap. They don’t kill the animal, so you can release back to the wild.

That night I baited the trap with peanut butter (mice, apparently are fools for the stuff) and set it up in back of the bird cage and happily went to bed.  After mere moments I heard a snap.

I leaped up  and smugly ran to the kitchen. In the cage was a teeny, furious brown mouse with a glossy coat.  I may have even whistled a little as I brought it behind the barn and gently tipped the creature onto a pile of leaves.

Just to be on safe side, I set the trap up again. I caught three mice that night.  It may have even been the same mouse. They all look alike, so I can’t say for sure.

What I do know is that the by the time morning came I was a new person.  A blood thirsty one.  Cute little noses and tiny pink feet no longer had the power to move me. I wanted them dead. All of them. And their families too.

I went back to the store for weapons. I still wouldn’t buy glue traps and poison is out,  since poisoned mice go outside and can be eaten by birds or my dogs.  But I bought so many snap traps that the woman behind the register

eyed me suspiciously as if she thought I was going to sneak them in Halloween candy.  As if I’d waste precious mouse traps on children!

As soon as I got home I set them up. One in the kitchen, one in the closet and one behind the birdcage. I went to bed warmed by the thought that the mice were going to be gone from my life. I even dreamed about the little suckers.

In the morning I checked the traps carefully. The mice had somehow licked the peanut butter off and escaped the traps. I was enraged. I swear I heard the damn things laughing at me.  Apparently I was now feeding them.

Cursing loudly, I reset the traps, carefully smearing the peanut butter all over the bait surface.  This. Was. War!

That afternoon Poppy snagged another one.  Eventually I caught one in a trap. And then another. Right now about half the time I catch them, and the rest of the time they lick the trap clean. But the body count is growing.

I’m not exactly winning the war, but between Poppy and I, we’re holding our own. But honestly, if I thought a flea fogger would kill mice, I’d buy so many you’d see me on the evening news.

Of Mice and Woman

At 5 am yesterday Poppy the Brittany decided that there was a mouse in the house. Even worse, it was in my bedroom. And as much as I tried to ignore her, that wasn’t going to fly. She didn’t care how comfy and warm my bed was. Heck, five minutes earlier she had been up there snoring too. But now she was awake, barking and trying to push the canaries’ flight cage, which sits on wheels, around. Poppy’s little and determined but she wasn’t having any luck.

Eventually I got up. Bitching loudly. To prove to the annoying dog that there was nothing under the cage, I slid part of it away from the wall. Imagine both our surprise when a hefty mouse tore out the opposite end and took refuge in back of the dog crates. It’s worth noting that the Dalai the Great Dane did not even notice the mouse underneath her. Or even wake up.

Later it became apparent that in addition to buying a mouse trap, I was going to have to do a full, serious, intensive house cleaning. I didn’t want to. I hate cleaning. Oh, I don’t mind sweeping and doing dishes and stuff like that. In fact my kitchen is quite pristine, but the idea of washing floors and scrubbing the bathrooms makes me run for the hills. Or, more precisely, to my office to write.  And as any writer will tell you, we will do practically anything NOT to write. Cleaning is worse.

But it had to be done.

I’ve had mice in the house before. But please don’t judge completely. I live on what in Los Angeles we call a ranchette. It’s under an acre, but I have two horses in the backyard. All my neighbors also have horses and then some. There is also a small flock of feral chickens that visit my front yard every morning and a rogue Guinea Hen that lives up the block. So mice aren’t unheard of, though I would prefer they stay outside where they belong.

In fact, the first mouse I had, I caught in my kitchen sink. What he was doing there remains a mystery to me.  Still, he was tiny, cute and the first. So I carefully put a glass over him and gently transferred the glass to the backyard where I let him go. I’m pretty sure he beat me back into the house.

The mouse, or its relative showed up a couple of days later in the bedroom, where Poppy, dispatched  it rather quickly. She was a little bummed that her new toy had stopped moving , but she was very, very proud. It took a little time to convince her to let me take away.  I was cringing the whole time, mind you, but if I didn’t move it to the outside trash it would still be there. With Poppy poking the corpse.

The next mouse arrived a few days later, in the TV room. That space is alternately known by one and all as the ‘cat room.’ Because that’s where the cat lives. She doesn’t get along with the dogs, so when they are in her room she hides under the couch. Don’t feel too sorry for her—she has an outdoor catio with a tree and a puffy pillow. Which is a big step up for a cat that was dumped at a barn and lived on mice and rats for the three weeks it took me to catch her.

Obviously she had decided that her days of eating mice were long past. I was sitting watching TV one evening when I saw a tail twitching in the bookcase. The cat refused to acknowledge its existence. So I shooed her back under the couch and called my personal exterminator, Poppy. Ten seconds later the mouse was no more. It was, as they say, a clean kill. This time Poppy was resigned to me taking it away. Yuck.

I know Poppy will eventually take care of the current rodent—if in fact it’s still in the house. I did a thorough cleaning today and even vacuumed the bird cage inside and out and saw no sign of the mouse.  

I mean, it could have gone out the way it came in, right?