More Chicken Fiascos

Monday morning when I took Ayden out to the car to load him up and off to school, we heard the customary crowing issuing from the chicken coop. I've heard it so much at this point I can even accurately spell it: err-err-ERRRRRRRRR! Strangest crow I've ever heard. He's completely missing the "doodle" portion. Anyway, this particular morning we hear the err-err-ERRRRRRRR directly followed by a slightly softer scratchy sounding crow. So apparently our white Ameraucana rooster has finally started crowing. I happened to finally see him do it in person this afternoon, and let me tell you, despite his deficit of practice, he is considerably better than the black rooster. First of all, his voice is husky and sorta sexy sounding (can I say that about my rooster?), and he has a distinct trill in the middle of his crow. It's actually quite pretty. I'll try to video it sometime.

The next morning I decided to let the chickens out before taking Ayden to school, as he loves to help me with chicken chores. Upon my return, I was greeted with one of my black hens OUTSIDE the gate in the driveway. So I parked the car out in the street as to not scare her away from the gate. I open the gate, in she goes. As I'm headed back to my car, I hear a rustling in the dry leaves down the street. There I spy two MORE black hens, on the wrong side of the fence. Grrr. So I reopen the gate and huff it down the street a little ways and chase them into the yard. Of course, one of them darts into the yard and the other runs to the far side of the street and hides in the neighbor's ditch. Wonderful. Of course now a car is coming, and I know for certain my chicken is going to choose that very minute to run back across the street to our yard and get hit. So I'm waving at the guy who kindly stopped for us and I'm putting myself between her and the street, hoping to hold her there until the car goes. He's laughing and yelling out his window, "She get away from you?" Ha. Ha. So he starts to pull forward, and off she goes, darting out in front of him. I motion him to stop, and she escapes unscathed. Thinking I'm finally done hearding wayward chickens, I take one last look around. Way down the street, maybe 250-300 yards away, I see my neighbors chickens out in the street. I thought to myself, "Boy, one of his scrawny chickens sure got fat!" I squint my eyes and look closer. ITS THAT CHICKEN! The White Devil Chicken! Gone-a-visiting.
As I'm headed down there (keep in mind my car is still idling in the street behind me) here comes another vehicle, this time a good-ol'-boy in his pickup. He stops and introduces himself as the man who lives behind us. Who knew? He gives me a bit of a hard time about my wandering chickens, and I'm off to reclaim my Devil Chicken. Thankfully she was open to the idea of returning home.
So now almost every day I find chickens out in the street, scattered from my driveway all the way down to my neighbor's driveway. I've given you a picture here to show really how far they're wandering. Today there were 6 out there. I suspect a certain Game Rooster is the major attraction down there. I'm going to have some funny looking babies from these girls if they keep it up. Maybe they're embarrassed by their harem-masters' crows and choose to go to a bird who really knows what he's doing. Saturday my mother and I found 10 on the wrong side of the fence, thankfully that time in the lot next door, though. Thats more than half my flock! You'd think they didn't have a huge yard to run in.