(OK, so she’s no longer a pullet…get over it!)

 

Two neighbor kids brought me a chicken addition yesterday morning. They said their other hens all got eaten by dogs and this one was attacked but they got her away, so they wanted to find her a good home.

 

She’s a Buff Orpington (probably my favorite chicken of all time) about three or four years old, Lisa estimates.  She arrived all fluffed up and shock-y, so I brought her in overnight. She’s fine today. Tonight she’s in a small cage inside the hen pen so she’s safe from the other hens while she settles in and the others get acquainted with her. In a day or two I’ll tuck her into the shed next to the other hens after dark while everybody is roosting. Lisa says if I do it that way, the others will leave her alone in the morning and they’ll all exit together like one big happy family.  It worked the other times I tried it with chickens we added, so it should work this time, too.

 

The kids say she isn’t laying anymore, but I suspect that’s because she was stressed out big time watching her hen friends get chased and eaten by dogs.  She hasn’t laid an egg yet in the cage (in two days) but she might once she’s turned loose to be free again… No biggy if she doesn’t.  She’s a very nice chicken and likes to be petted, so she’ll fit right in with the rest of my brood…

 

I’m  a little depressed today.  I suppose it’s because today is November 22nd–the day JFK was assassinated when I was eleven years old.  Until my grand niece Casey came along on this date fifteen years ago, November 22nd was always a 100% downer day for me. Now that Casey’s here, it’s a little better…but her birth didn’t eradicate the sorrow of this day; it just kind of put a band-aid on it. The scar is still there, more than half a century later. When you get broadsided like this as a kid, the injury lasts a lifetime…

 

I remember Thanksgiving weekend in 1963. We were at Aunt Marie’s and we spent most of the day (I think it was a Sunday) watching the funeral cortege in Washington DC as JFK’s flag-draped coffin was carried to the Rotunda.  I remember John John (JFK Jr.) saluting the coffin as it passed by them, and Jackie, RFK, EMK and other Kennedy family members standing with him.

 

It broke my heart.

 

I will never, ever forget it…