Once upon a time, in a very small town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a banty hen made a nest in a neighbor's yard. Little did the neighbors know that their lives were going to be changed forever...
Growing up in the suburbs of D.C., I never considered that I would someday have chickens. Cats? Absolutely. Dogs? Of course. Box turtles, goldfish, gerbils, siberian hamsters, guinea pigs, parakeets, betta fish? Sure. Chickens? Hmmm....
Last summer we moved into a 1920s farmhouse on a half-acre of land. It needs a lot of work. My darling man is digging ditches for electrical conduit, replacing plumbing, insulating sheds and repairing roofs. I'm painting and scraping and scrubbing. We're cleaning out and paring down. We don't have time for anything else. Then, while mowing the extremely tall grass behind his shed, DM discovers a nest with eleven eggs in it. We're not sure if they're snake or chicken eggs. They're on the ground, previously hidden. We haven't seen chickens in our yard, although people around us have them. We do know that we have a six-foot-long black snake living in our crawl space. So we watch. A small hen comes over and takes up residence on the nest. My DM leans an old door against the shed to provide some shelter for her. We're both tickled by all this.
Enter a stupid stray cat. Now, don't misunderstand me. We have a couple of strays in the yard that adopted us and we love them. But there's a big monster cat that lives in the area - he's bigger than my 25-pound dog. DM heard the cat scare the bejeezus out of the hen and chased her off the nest. The hen fought back but realized that she had no chance. Henny went back home.
My darling man really is badass. He really, really is. But he was so incredibly sad over henny returning to her place...what could I do but order some biddies?

Stay tuned for the continuing saga of the blonde newbie and her Viking chickens...