Wow, Joy. They all look fabulous, as usual. Hagrid is looking especially manly all of a sudden.
I have to confess that I did something stupendously stupid tonight. I was down at the coop, letting the guys free range while the weather was nice and church time snuck up on me. They were having such a nice time that I hated to put them up. I live five miles from church so I knew I would be gone a little over an hour and that they would go back into the coop and bed themselves down about half an hour after I left. Surely it's not worth the struggle of herding / bribing them back in and deny them of thirty more minutes of sunshine!
When I got home there was not a soul in the coop. I walked around back and there were nine huddled together on a board out in the open. I moved all of them back in and in the process found another group roosting on a pile of lumber beside the coop. I moved all of them in and started counting. I counted ten times before my mind registered that there were only fourteen there. I was missing one! I didn't have to look at leg bands to know that it was very favorite hen. The one that always comes over and sits with me whenever I'm stationary.
I raced back to the house and pulled DH away from the Super Bowl and we hit the woods. There wasn't a sound anywhere. We looked for fifteen minutes until I finally heard a rustle down in a little dip covered with a pile of dead wisteria vines. It was my little girl!!! I have know idea why she wasn't with the two groups. I have no idea why they weren't all in the coop when I got home. They didn't act skittish or spooked. They were hungry and thirsty, but otherwise completely normal.
I am completely reformed, now. I will never, ever, ever let them out of the coop and run without me right there with them. I aged fifteen years tonight picturing foxes, hawks, rogue dogs... I kept them all up past their bed times checking and rechecking them for injuries, really just needing an excuse to handle them.
They say confession is good for the soul...
