Saturday, September 25, 2010

Trying To Train a Chicken

I went to see Mountain Mama and was a bit alarmed by the long scratch from her ear, across her cheekbone, all the way to the bridge of her nose. It looked like she had been sword fighting like The Three Musketeers. She is ninety, after all, so we worry about her health. I asked her about it, and she started laughing.

It seems that she was trying to train one of her chickens. Mamie has very nice nesting boxes for her hens, so she makes every attempt to have them lay in them; but,she says that some chickens are rather opinionated about where they want to roost. One of her layers didn't agree with Mamie's motel plan, so she set herself up on the top of a door that is still opens to the outside.

Mamie was fed up with the cheekiness of this chicken, so she decided to give her a nudge in the right direction, which would have been down to her real roost. She shut the door, hoping to have the bird relocate herself to her proper place. This method sort of worked. The hen was dislodged; in her hurry, and with a flurry, she flew down to Mamie's head. Darkness had descended,so the hen apparently thought that Mamie's hair was a nice warm bed of straw at a comfortable height and distance for her to reach in one leap.

The startled Mamie didn't see the hen hopping off her perch; all she felt was something landing on her head. This led to the natural reaction of giving whatever it was the brush off. This hen was having no part of this, and grabbed Mamie's cheekbone with her claw, hanging on for dear life. Mamie's hand was already in brushing motion, so she's left with scar from her duel with a hen hanging on to her squatter's home.

Mamie's mountain daughter tended to her wound, and it seems to be healing nicely. But I am left wondering exactly who trained whom.