So, I get home at 2:15 and my husband is already home because they got off early today. I go inside start talking and then lay down for my short afternoon nap. About 1 1/2 hours later I'm talking to my husband and suddenly I remembered! I DIDN'T COLLECT EGGS TODAY! By now its really hot, like 102 or something. I rush outside with my egg basket and find 12 intact eggs and 5 that had been eaten or hole pecked and one that was covered in yolk....oh, and fire ants! FIRE ANTS EVERY WHERE! I reach in and start putting all the soiled shavings in a (new) kitty litter pan I had out there as a back-up nest (didn't work btw). Of course the shavings are sticky and the ants are sticking to the shavings so NOW I have fire ant bites from hell all over my hand and I can't shake them off! I know, D'OH! After I clean up the mess I start looking for the culprit. Uh-huh, I find her. One of my EE'rs. Her beak has sticky yolk and bits of shavings on it and her muff is stiff...she's the one, alright. She was referred to as one of the "Lucy's" before because she's red....now she will forever be known as "EE"....not for Easter Egg but for EGG EATER. I run inside to wash the fire ants from hell's now corpse off my hand. I then run back outside because I noticed EE was inside another nest and I still had three girls in there trying to do their egg laying. As I watch she crowds into the BO's nest and EE very gently drops an egg. A good one too, 52 grams of pale olive beauty. So I decide not to be too mad, it's only happened once...kinda...I have had a couple of pecked eggs...... So I pick EE out of the nest and she's very calm. COOL! I decide I need to mark her with something and I remember I have a permanent fabric marker inside so I cradle EE in my arms and carry my little egg eater inside, through the back door, to properly scold her (not SCALD) and to mark her for future observation...... ........THEN THE CHICK HITS THE FAN! Okay, not a real fan, just replace CHICK with a similar sound word that starts with an "S"....! That dang chicken flies out of my arms right into the blinds over the window seat in the dining room! Then she squawks bloody murder and flies directly into the coleus plant and knocks it off the table and then, I swear, she STOMPS the six year old plant and breaks off about 15 leaves and part of a branch! THEN she flies into my quilt hanging on the wall and Im thinking, Please dont poop! Please dont POOP! .and then she poops. Finally, 7 tail feathers and about 20 misc feathers later, I caught her, again. My husband (who was working out of course) comes in and just shakes his head. Oh, and yeah, I did get her marked! I need a bath (sigh, drip, drip)
Well, I thought my day was going badly... I stand corrected! (Great storytelling, BTW. Silly hens - both of you!)
Mmmm....I think I'd be marking her for the soup pot cos she's going to teach the rest of them how to eat eggs and then you will have worse problems. I'm thinking being attacked by fire ants, plant destroyed, eggs destroyed, quilt pooped etc is more than enough trouble from one Lucy. Kinda lives up to her namesake, doesn't she,
Quote: YES! I didn't think of that but, YES!!! ..supposed no one wants to hear how I just got home from Walmart and I went to shut the mister hose off and my legs were swarmed with thousands of fire ants AND they even bit my face??? Maybe I should go to bed. I only ended up with 16 eggs today and I had 24 yesterday. If I continue to have problems with the EE then she will become food. Thanks for listening everyone.