Stubborn Hens

We have six bug infested acres out here, so this summer I decided to get proactive.  I got fifteen guinea hens who had arrived in a box not much bigger than a shoe box, and were the most adorable baby birds I'd ever seen.  A few short weeks later they had evolved into dinosaurs.  After one of the dogs went on several epic killing sprees, and an unidentified predator picked the last of the white ones out of the tree, I was left with eight hens.  There was no way we could keep them over the winter.  The birds certainly knew where home was, but for the most part they were wild.  It was a struggle to get them into their coop, and for the duration of their flying lives, they'd slept in the pine tree directly outside our front door where they could make a fuss each time I went outside after dark. 

The bitter cold was fast approaching and I was left with limited options.  So I chose the best one: drive the live birds "up north" and return a few days later for some vacuum packed chicken.  One stumbling filled adventure later and now I'm left with six vacuum packed chickens and two oversized grey hens who are more than a little wary of me.

Of the Final Eight, three of the hens were decidedly outcasts.  On the bottom of the pecking order, they were constantly harassed.  They were chased away and pecked at if they followed too closely, or tried to eat when the others did.  If any of the girls was having a tough day, she took it out on one of these three.  So of course, two of these did not make it into the coop of the Sunday eve of Monday's Day of Death.

They were "going up north" early Monday morning, and since I couldn't imagine how to remove eight sleeping chickens from the branches of a pine tree before sunrise, I decided that I would get them all in the coop the night before, making the morning extraction easier.  Except I couldn't get them all in because the other hens kept kicking out two of the rejects.

So I finally gave up.  Six chickens eventually (adventurously?)  made their sterile way to chicken heaven.  And now I'm left with two stubborn birds.  Try explaining to a three year old that all the chickens will be going up to heaven soon, but that's ok because chickens don't live very long.  "So mom, if chickens don't live very long, why are these two still around?"  They refuse to sleep in the coop, preferring instead the branches of their pine tree.  They survived the snow we got on Christmas and the bitter cold that followed.  I kept waiting to wake up to a frozen bird fallen from the tree, grim I know, but the odds are seriously against these two.  But apparently, they refuse to freeze.  And these formally tiny rejects have nearly doubled in size now that they face no competition for food.  They're calmer, and it's a lot quieter around here now.

Winter's definitely not over, but they have survived, no wait, they've thrived thus far, and it can't get much worse than it has been.  So despite my best laid plans, it looks like I'm going to have two huge hens hanging around this summer.

I wonder what they'll think of  next year's hens...