Susan and the Terrible, Horrible Mostly Not-Good Day

This is one of those days that you are just thankful when it's over. Not very good English, but who cares about grammar after a day like this? I did get a few things accomplished that I can feel good about now that all the dirt is washed away and I've had a bite to eat. One thing was to finish closing in one aisle of the barn with chicken wire and tying it in to the 10' x 10' dog kennel that Herb set up this morning so the chickens will be safely closed in now that . . . but I'm getting ahead of myself. This is like one of those ER episodes where they started at the end of the day and filmed back . . .
The last thing that happened was the second best, but a pretty good thing at that: My first day to get TWO eggs at once! That means that Emerelda has company laying eggs. Silly girls, they both used the same nest box, so I put one of the eggs in the other one and left it while I hung chicken wire, hoping they'd get the idea that there's room for everyone. Maybe one day getting eggs will be mundane enough that I don't feel the need to take pictures of them, but that day is not here yet! Obviously, whoever chicken number two is, she's a faux Ameraucana, too! I think Esmerelda's is the pinker egg, and the new girl's is brown--just plain old, mundane brown.
But who can complain with yolks (ta!da! Karen!) this yellow. Since Herb was staying late at school for parent-teacher conferences and Kara had had a worse day than mine, I poached her an egg for supper.
[Blurry action as we go back in time to me getting my hair cut at 2:00 p.m.] The sylist asked how I was, and this is what I told her: I haven't had breakfast yet and I'm having a terrible day, but the best thing that has happened to me all day is that I just got rid of my rooster over at the Farm & Garden Store! I read on the internet recently that the closest living relative to a Tyrannosaurus Rex is the chicken. Well, they've got it wrong--it's a Velociraptor! Anyone who has ever seen "Jurassic Park" knows that Raptors are way scarier than T-Rexes! And those innocent-looking little dinosaurs that fluffed up their neck flaps and killed that fat guy in the Jeep? Well, my rooster is a cross between them and Velociraptors!

Yesterday morning when I went to let the chickens out, he came after me even though I had my chicken stick pointing at him. He fluffed up his neck feathers to three times their size, puffed out his chest, spread his wings and jumped claws first at me so hard that he actually jumped into the point of my stick. And then he did it again! When I shook it at him, he finally ran off. So last night, after the chickens went up into the coop, I put long leather gloves on, reached in, got Carmen, and stuffed him into a dog carrier that Herb was holding for me. Then I put the carrier in the coop so he could spend one last night with "his" girls.

When I finally got home about noon today, I took the carrier and drove over to the Farm & Garden Store. Stephanie wasn't there, but I told her husband Tom that she had said I could leave my rooster there because he was so mean, and that someone would be sure to want him. Tom started to reach into the carrier to pull Carmen out, and I said, "You don't really want to do that! He's really mean and attacks us." So he tried to shake Carmen out into one of their cages, but Carmen didn't want to go. At my suggestion, he finally got some heavy gloves to pull Carmen out.

"He's really nice looking," he said as he reached in. "Yeah," I answered, "but he's as mean as the devil!" As he pulled Carmen out, he exclaimed, "Oh, this is just a young rooster! He doesn't even have spurs!" As I told the sylist, I'm sure they're still laughing over there about the crazy lady who was so terrified of this spur-less little baby that she gave away a perfectly good rooster! I'll probably have to wear a disguise next time I go in there, but I'm still glad to have Carmen gone. Even if he was just a cute little baby Raptor, he was terrifying in his own mind--and he believed it enough to convince us! Talk about imposters!So Carmen has the last laugh, impersonating a big old scary rooster who could put a spur through a steel-toed boot or terrify people so much that they have to sneak out of their houses when he isn't looking (both true rooster stories I've heard!) Or does he? Here's his last picture, sitting in a cage waiting for a new home--with someone who actually knows something about chickens and knows he's full of sound and fury, signifying nothing--until he earns his spurs!