Weirdest. Morning. EVER.

You know, I haven't posted a Weird Animal Story in a while, mainly because the Killer Psycho Mockingbirds have been relatively quiet. So... I guess we were kind of overdue.

So... this morning. We troop out of the house so I can take the kids to school, and as we get to the car, I pause. Why? Because there's this huge BUZZARD, also known as a turkey vulture in the street behind my car. Just sort of... hanging out. You know. "Doopty doo, doopty doo, nothing to worry about folks, hyuk, just doin' mah buzzard thang heere, heh... don't mind me, now, y'all just... pretend I'm not here!"

Riiiiiight.

And he won't move. Usually, buzzards don't like being approached, and will take off if you get too close. Not this one. I figured whatever it was that was dead, it must be really, er... tasty. Or something. Problem was, I couldn't smell anything dead nearby, and didn't see anything, either. So, I herded the kids into the car and had to back up creatively so I didn't end up with a big ol' turkey buzzard stuck to my rear bumper. And it was as I was pulling out that I realized what had attracted Mr. Buzzard.

Our neighbors had this... this... HUGE FISH lying in their front yard against the mutual hedge between our properties. I swear the thing must have been six feet long!! NO WONDER Mr. Buzzard was so determined to stick around, I mean, he must have thought he'd hit the Mother Lode of Dead Crap!!

Okay, so... the kids were freaking out, and laughing hysterically, and kept looking back to see if he'd approached the Big Dead Fish yet the whole way up the street.

The Impossible Son looked back as we turned and said, "He's going for it!"

So... we get to the Impossible Son's school, and there is a truck in front of us that has a... tiny deer sitting on the hitch. No, seriously. A tiny little deer, sitting cross-legged on the hitch with one of it's forelegs up in the air, like it's saying, "Hi there!!"

The Impertinent One said, "Oh, I wonder if it's like the cow Papa and I saw on a truck once! When they hit the turn signal, the cow's eyes glowed red and the legs went up and down!"

"Yaaaaagh!" I said. "That sounds creepy!! And distracting!!"

The truck didn't turn, so the kids were disappointed. However, after I dropped the Impossible Son off, and then went to drop Miss Impertinent off at the high school, the truck appeared again, turning out of the driveway of one of the schools I pass on the way home, and there was the tiny deer again. This time, the truck turned, and THE DEER WAVED AT ME AND KICKED ONE LEG UP AND DOWN!!

O.O

I almost had a car accident, I was so... mesmerized...

So, when I got home, Mr. Turkey Buzzard was pecking half-heartedly at the Big Dead Fish, and I could swear he was saying, "WTF is this shit??" I peeked around the hedge and realized his problem right away.

It was a TAXIDERMIED Big Dead Fish!! In fact, it had lost most of its scales at some point, and there was fiber sticking out from where it had split at the top, and oh, the reek!!! Evidently, the bushes sort of protected us from it.

Mr. Buzzard gave this indignant squawk and sort of hop-flapped away before taking off for something less well-preserved. I mean, seriously, it's pretty bad when you manage to disgust a BUZZARD.

Because a hand up a chicken is worth... um... ewwwwwww....

I was curled up on the bed with the laptop, and the Husbandly One was lying next to me when the Impertinent Daughter came in for advice about her class schedule for next year. Mainly on her four electives. And among the possibilities we threw out at her, one was "Small Animal Management."

"You're always wanting small animals," the Husbandly One said to her scowl. "Hamsters. Guinea pigs. Elephants."

"I think they mean critters like rabbits, goats, and chickens," I said to keep her from throwing something at him. And... that led into a highly inappropriate discussion about chickens.

At this point, y'all need the backstory. See, back about five years or so ago, we became the unintentional owners of chickens, thanks to our landlord and his wife. The first one we got because they were moving and couldn't take the hen that had wandered up to their house as a chick along with them. Fine. And Super Chick was a totally awesome chicken, going everywhere our kids went and cuddling with the outdoor cats when she wanted to take a rest. She went with us when we moved, and started doing things like going down the playscape slide in our backyard with the kids and stealing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from them. And she laid the prettiest blue-green eggs you ever saw, so I'm guessing she was at least part Auracana.

Then we got two more that our former landlord's wife had acquired and realized she couldn't keep when her husband named them "Lunch" and "Dinner" and started eyeing them hungrily when they were old enough to start laying. Yes, I'm a sucker for hard luck stories. I took them, and we named them "Hedda Hopper" because she was always trying to hop onto our heads for some inexplicable reason. If you didn't panic, she'd happily perch on your head while you walked around, before dropping a seriously huge and nasty poop down your back, usually inside your collar. As you can imagine, we didn't let Hedda hoppa on our headas too much!

The other was named "Kung Fu Chicken" because she'd strut toward us making these... sounds that you only really hear from Bruce Lee before he's about to go all choppity on some bad guy, and you'd think, "Oh, gods, this chicken is going to kill me!" And then she'd either rub against you, or hop up in your lap to snuggle... or chase off the snake that you'd been about to step on.

They laid brown eggs. Don't even ask what they were, because Mrs. Landlord had said they were "Silkies" but when I looked them up, they matched none of the characteristics.

Anyhow, we kept them and happily collected eggs from them, which was wonderful, and exciting, because sometimes, the girls didn't want to lay in their nesting boxes. It was like going on an Easter egg hunt every day!! But eventually, and most unexpectedly... they quit laying.

Now, I will freely admit, we went into this blind, mainly because... we hadn't planned on acquiring chickens. Ever. And suddenly, we had them. I had gone into town (we lived out in the country at the time) to hit the library and look for info and that was when I discovered how woefully inadequate the town library was. I found everything on raising rabbits, goats, calves, taking care of cattle, wound care in steers, sheep, guinea fowl, turkeys, god-damned EMUS, fer gossakes... but nothing on chickens!!

Since I had to get feed anyway, I decided to ask at the feed store, because they were always a good source of information about chickens, since they sold them. And I got this energetic old lady who came out, listened sympathetically to my problem and said in a very strong East Texas accent, "Waaaaal, hon, ah think th' problem yer havin' is that yer hens is Egg Bound. So, what you gotta do is, you gotta grease up yer hand and stick it up your chicken's clo-WACKA!"

Yeah, I know it's spelled "cloacha," but... that ain't how she said it, yo.

I'm a city girl, raised by a country boy and a country girl, and we've had chickens and ducks, though that was when I was pretty small. So, I reacted as any girl raised in my circumstances would.

My jaw dropped and I said, 'You want me to put what WHERE??"

"Yew gotta put yer hand up the hen's clo-WACKA!!" and she proceeded to describe the procedure, which most decidedly squicked me something awful, and I decided then and there it was entirely worth the expense of a vet.

Okay, so cut back to tonight, when we're having our highly inappropriate discussion of chickens. I had just said, "I think they mean critters like rabbits, goats, and chickens."

And THO promptly said, "Yew have to put yer hand... up the chicken's clo-WACKA!" and the Impertinent Daughter started laughing.

So, I said, "Yep, you gotta greeeeease that hand up, and just shove it on up in thar, and then you feeeeeel around and if you feel a leetle bump, and then one BIG bump, that's Egg Bound, and you just squeeze it off. But if all you feel is two little ol' nubs, you ain't got a problem! And I said, yes, I do have a problem, I have my hand up a chicken's butt!"

THO snorted then said, "Wow, Mama, you'd be fisting a chicken!!"

I thought the Impertinent One was going to suffocate, she was laughing so hard. "Stop, stop!" she wheezed at us.

"I cud slick 'er up real good with vaseline, or Crisco, if you prefer," I said, and sent both of them off laughing.

Then THO said, "We could get you a bumper sticker. I Fist Chickens."

"Oh, EWWW!!" said the Impertinent One.

"Chicken Fister?" I said, grimacing.

"AW, STOP! Stopstopstop!!" wailed Miss Impertinent, waving her hands and laughing helplessly.

It got highly inappropriate after that, and we were laughing and hooting and wiping tears off our faces. Somehow, I don't think we're ever going to look at chickens the same way again!

The Things That Go BANG In The Night

You know how it is, when you finally get to bed, you're so very tired, and your head hits the pillow? You pull the quilts up over your shoulder, snuggle into your warm, significant other, and just dive into sleep? It's wonderful, actually.

However...

There I was, drifting into one of those truly puzzling dreams I sometimes have, where this lady from the local feed store kept squawking, "Ye'gotta put yer hand up the chicken's cloacha (she pronounced it loudly, "clo-WACK-uh") and feel your way to the omnibus..."

Omnibus???

And THEN... there was this resounding BANG!! CRASH!! CLAAAANG!!! from the living room. I thought, damn, did the cats knock the cookie sheets off the counter?? Then I thought, no, they knocked the stereo off the bookcase, dammit. Then, I heard the frantic squawking, and sat up to shake the Husbandly One awake. "They knocked the bird cage down again!!"

He didn't want to get up. I can't blame him, really.

So I got up and went into the living room, turning on lights, fully expecting to see a slightly dismembered, though apparently still alive, parakeet hanging from either Muta or Calcifer's mouth. The cage (which is huge by the way) was on the floor, top off (because the cats have figured out how to take it off), there was bird seed, bird poop, and water everywhere, as well as potting soil, DVD's, and inexplicably, my kids' soccer shoes. The bird was behind the entertainment center, scolding the cats furiously, who were all stalking her, and I swear they all had that same smirk on their face that the Grinch gets when he's plotting something evil!! I grabbed the Instrument of Cat Discipline and started squirting like mad while shouting, "Honey, the cage is down, the bird is out, the cats know it... HELP ME, DAMMIT!!!"

It was not fun. Have I mentioned that this bird is psycho?? At one point, I had her in the kitchen, and almost got her to perch on my hand. Almost. At the last second, she flew shrieking at my face. I ducked, she flew into the dining room, the hall, and into the bathroom. As I followed, I discovered the dog had left me a nice, squishy, smelly, and still warm present in front of the bathroom door. It was not my night, was it?

The Husbandly One corraled Miss Stinky Anti-social Parakeet by taking the top part of the cage and slipping it over her in the bathroom. She flew up to escape, and thus became convinced she was trapped in her cage again. Apparently, thinking up diabolical plots to dismember us all with her beak takes up all her teeny, tiny brain power, and therefore, she was incapable of thinking, "Hey, all I gotta do is fly down and I'm outta here!!"

Stupid bird.

We got the cage put back together and she's back on her high spot. My morning will be occupied with removing bird seed and other... things... from the living room floor, the couch, the fish tank, the window sills, the ceiling fan, and probably a whole lot of other places I'll discover as I clean.

Did I mention how much I hate this bird?

*grabs broom, dustpan, bucket, sponges, and other cleaning supplies, muttering imprecations under her breath as she departs for the living room*