I'm sure the title caught your eye, I'd like to tell you a story on how I fell in love with my chickens.
So I inherited a flock of eight chickens from my neighbor, ( I think it was eight). I either had to take them or slowly watch them getting picked off by the coyotes in the woods. Just could not handle anymore the piles of feathers heaping up on my driveway from the poor little slaughtered hens.
So my happy little hens lived in my back fenced in acreage and at first I wasn't really happy about my decision because I thought that raising chickens was going to be a lot of hard work, and that I thought I didn't have the time to take care of them because of school, kids, dogs, cats, etc. etc.
They also had a habit of using the dog door, They had an indoor coop inside of the barn/garage that led out to the backyard. From the backyard, there was a dog door that the dogs had to push against to open up the door to get into the garage. Now leading from the garage that was attached to my house, there was another dog door that led into my laundry that was right off of my kitchen.
Every so often, I was greeted with a stray chicken in my kitchen. Normally one of my mouthy black chickens. Like she was saying. "You invited me in, so where is the coffee and croissants?" With her head cocked and her mouth open. Like some sort of teenager that is left with nothing to say except those noises that they make that you just interpret for words. (and if we actually could hear the words behind the noises, they'd be grounded for life)
(Let me give a little background story, I am allergic to some of the coatings on over the counter medicine. I don't know which ones, sometimes red, sometimes yellow, but not all the red or all the yellow. So if I have a nasty cold, I take the medicine and hope and pray that I don't hallucinate or get a scratchy throat. ( Yes very funny, but not funny when having to take sinus medicine and I went to a little girls birthday party and her mom looked like she had an elephant trunk.....an elephant trunk people. I kept wanting to give it/the little girls mom..... a peanut).
So I was sitting in my kitchen, and had just taken some medicine for my ever present sinus problem, that didn't have any coating mind you. I was drinking a cup of coffee when I started to feel strange. I hadn't had any problems with my allergies to coatings in a long time since I started buying meds that didn't have any coatings at all.
When low and behold I saw one of my chickens poke their head around the corner of my fridge. Now you would say " I have that problem too once in a while" But since I have having a severe allergic reaction. My chickens were a rainbow of colors, I'm talking about colors that we would only hope that would exist in heaven. The top part of one of chickens was a bright florescent blue and shimmered into a kaleidoscope of other colors that I could not possibly explain. In all I have four chickens invade my kitchen.
And we had a stand off................ I looked at them.............They looked at me......Neither of us moved.
They didn't move because they knew they were busted. I didn't move because I didn't want one of them to turn into a dinosaur.
What broke the silence was me yelling to my husband..".Honey...the chickens are blue!!!!!?"
He comes in with a puzzled look on his face...He looks at me....then looks at the chickens....He looks at me .................with a long pause.and says............"You mean sad?"
"No! Not sad!" I had said back when I realized that he didn't see what I saw and that this time I really needed my epipen.
So we got all of my chickens out of the house...which was really disappointing for me because I kept wanting to look at them instead of getting them out of my kitchen, once I knew that I wasn't going to die from allergies I wanted them to stay. Not one turned into a dinosaur...which i was really grateful. Imagine having to feed them the next day after they scared the bejeezus out of you from turning into a velociraptor or a pterodactyl.
No I am not crazy....for those of you that has extreme allergic reactions to stuff people take for granted. You are not alone.
So after this little jaunt into madness, I realized something....I really enjoyed having them around. We talked about finding them new homes after having my latest allergic reaction. But I just couldn't do it, I loved how each chicken has their own personality. That my bossy little black chickens make me laugh and want to ground them at the same time. That my silkies are the sweetest little mommas ever. That my rooster is really a silly little man that likes yell every fifteen minutes...."THIS MY YARD".
Did it really take my chickens to look psychedelic and really contemplate finding them new homes for me to really appreciate them? I guess it did. Because now do I not only have my chickens but I am continuously looking for new breeds to add to my flock. I love them dearly.
I am the crazy chicken lady in my neighborhood now....I definitely earned that title in more ways than one.
And that is my story and i'm sticking to it.