Z Sawyer

You remember the start of Tom Sawyer, when his aunt punishes him by making him whitewash the fence, and he manages to sell it as a treat to his friends?

Roses has taken on the chicken and she feels lucky.  Heh.  The chicken is doing all right.  I’ve got an antiseptic spray from the pet shot and we’re using that rather than ointment – which was fine, but this leaves it more open and less wet – and I can feel that her breastbone is less prominent, so the little she is eating is doing her good.  The pen is now in Roses’ porch and Roses herself is carrying little chicken round and is teaching her to ride on her shoulder.  *sigh*

I did my good deed for the day, yet it’s not that good a deed but a normal thing to do.  I went into town to do my shopping and, at the first shop, spent all my cash.  So i parked outside Barclays to use their cashpoint, and spotted a piece of brown paper in the gutter.  I picked it up and it was an envelope with a name and an amount of money written on it.  Clearly wages, over £100 and probably a week of part-time earning.  So I took it home and asked on the local Facebook page.  And, thank goodness, the owner was found.  She confirmed the sum and it was clearly the right person.  She’d worked extra last week to earn more for spending money for the family half-term holiday.  And the fact is, I feel just as happy to have found and returned her money as she does to have got it back.  And clearly no praise is due, it would have been dishonest, wrong, wicked to have kept it.  If I hadn’t found her over the weekend, I’d have handed it to the police on Monday and put the word about in local shops etc.  I’ve been embarrassingly praised on the FB site – but I reiterate, doing anything but returning it would have been wrong, stealing and really quite WTF?

Although the week took a decided downturn because of the poor chicken, it has picked up substantially since.  Roses let one of the mother hens into the run with the others yesterday and she seems to have integrated.  I put the other one in this evening and she was a bit nervous, clearly realising that she’d dropped way down the pecking order.  The cock was bullying her until I intervened and one of the black hens was throwing her weight about – but she’s a pretty assertive hen and I think it’ll be fine.  I’ll let them out tomorrow and by the evening they will all have forgotten she’d dropped out of the flock.  I now, at last, have a spare coop so will separate the young cocks from the hens.  I’m afraid that I still have one missing hen, so she may be sitting on yet another clutch of eggs.  But now I know I can rehome them, it’s only an annoyance, not a real problem.  If they hatch from now on, the coop will go in the greenhouse for warmth.

I hope to unobsess about animals soon. Especially sodding chickens.

6 comments on “Z Sawyer

  1. dinahmow

    At one time I had 3 coops with bantams-and-chickens, a pea-hen who’d gone off to lay god knows where and 2 guinea fowl who insisted (bloody shop stewards, they were!) on laying under a beehive….Oh, all the “regular” layers and cocks in the main run.

    Reply
  2. Z Post author

    We had to make two extra coops this summer and my tortoise table had to be called into emergency use. It’s put me right off, I’m ready to give away the lot of ’em!

    Reply
  3. Chairwoman Ros

    Isn’t it strange how what we consider normal behaviour, as in not keeping something that isn’t ones own, is considered to be notable? I have developed a theory about this, although I am a pretty secular kind of woman, and I think that to describe myself as an Agnostic Jew would be accurate, I think the demise of religious teaching in schools has a lot to do with it. I don’t mean learning about what various faiths (now there’s a nice PC phrase for you) do, I mean the “These are the 10 Commandments” kind of thing. Teaching fear, in the biblical sense, of the Creator. We can make our own minds up as adults which path to take, but a basic communal grounding in right from wrong never hurt anyone. My mother always said that if every body obeyed the Commandments and said the Lord’s prayer, they could offend no religion, and would live a good life.

    Here endeth my first lesson.

    By the Zoe, well done for setting an example that’s too often lacking. ☺

    Reply
    1. Z Post author

      I remember from when I was a governor at a primary school that we felt we had to be very careful when talking about right and wrong behaviour, because the odds were that a child would feel you were criticising a member of his or her family.

      Reply
  4. 63mago

    Excuse me Z, I am confused : Is the little hen – I would like to call her Mable – is Roses’ new friend, Mable, now living on her shoulder or has she, Mable, found her way back into the flock ?

    Reply
    1. Z Post author

      The little hen Mabel is still a half-grown chick, about three months old. The one I put back with the flock is a mother of half the chicks I gave away on Thursday. Mabel’s mother went back some time ago and Mabel is still living on Roses’ shoulder.

      Reply

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