outwitted, again

The new fence has been effective thus far in its short life, but trouble looms ahead.  For the most part, the hens stay on their side, and we stay on ours, life is in balance.  True, the chicken run now resembles a small nation struggling to keep illegal immigration at bay, but it’s reassuring to know that we can retreat to it if a herd of cattle ever comes stampeding through our yard.

We added brown leghorns (“leggerns”) to our flock by accident, but we came to like them as they grew into striking hens, with lacey plumage on their necks and big white ear lobes like Lyndon Johnson.  Hatcheries market the breed as a good choice for free-ranging flocks because they are alert for predators and athletic, but as a human who asks only to love my property & be loved in return, they are rather trying because they flee in panic whenever I approach.  So I am not inclined to flatter them with adjectives like clever or resourceful.

So I was surprised to find a leghorn working it’s way around the house soon after the fence crew had packed it up.  Not just once, but almost every day. Worse yet, she was scaling the fence by launching herself from the limbs of the run’s graceful vine maple, a tree I could prune only at risk of ugly divorce or painful death, or both.

Outwitted, again, and this time by a chicken of suspect intelligence. The hens yearn for freedom.  I lie awake in the dark & ask myself, what if the other hens follow her up the tree?  We might as well pull down the fence, but then where could we run from a stampede?

Coo, coo, ca choo.