The Chicken Gang in happier times.

Easter Chicks Gone Bad:

The Unexpected Menace

by Sheri Dixon

They looked innocent enough, like fuzzy giant skittles bouncing around the tub.

My friend had purchased colored Easter chicks for her daughters and had assumed that I would be thrilled to take them after Easter.  Why not? We DO live in the country.

Thirteen brightly colored chicklets arrived at our place in a large cage.  They were cute, they were fluffy, they were hungry.  They made endearing little noises when we fed them. We loved our chickens..

Before long, they had molted out of their Easter feathers and looked like real chickens.  They were turned loose to free range and be the cherry on our country yard sundae. 

The coyotes in the woods also loved our chicks.  In no time we were down to 8.  Our only Rhode Island Red in the bunch wandered into the dog pen and we were down to 7.  One started to terrorize the cats and went to live with a friend.  One chased our little boy and went to live with a neighbor.   Five chickens - 4 White Leghorn roosters and (we thought) a big Barred Rock hen.    

The Barred Rock foraged into the goat pen and the Great Pyrenees decided she needed a bath.  By the time I got out there she was gasping and dripping with dog drool.  I turned her back into the yard, and she didn't join up with the other chickens right away, she just stalked up and down, mumbling chicken curses.  From that point on, she couldn't/wouldn't roost up in the tree with the others, but chose a low spot right next to the goat pen (go figure) to sleep in.  We rested a piece of sheet-metal against the fence to make a chicken-tent.    

About that time they entered poultry puberty.  The roosters crowed roughly every 5 minutes all day long and most of the night.  They started making little fighting runs at each other and I worried that they would kill each other.  That would be bad, because we loved our chickens.  

I needn't have worried.  Before too long they stopped quarreling amongst themselves and turned all their energy on a common enemy - me, and by association, my son.

They were a Chicken Gang.  All they needed were little leather jackets, sunglasses, and packs of Camels (filter-less of course) rolled up into their wings.  They'd stand at the edge of the woods, daring the coyotes to come out.

They cruised the neighborhood, lookin' for trouble, mean and restless.   I now know what the Raptors in the Jurrasic Park movies are based on - roosters.  They have the same moves, calls and hunting tactics.  They would sneak up behind me to attack, barking strategy to each other.  If I turned around, they'd freeze and look off into the distance, casually.

 I started carrying a broom.     

They recognized my car and would come running at the sound of it.

I tucked the broom under the car seat.     

They would come onto the porch and stare at me through the glass door, growling. 

I was beginning to dislike our chickens.

 (continued)

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