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Chicken Little, Golden Eggs, and Swallowed Eggs

   Written by on July 23, 2015 at 1:56 pm

By Management

Some years ago, I made a passing comment that it sure would be nice to have fresh eggs. You would think that af- ter being married for 30 years, I would know which passing comments will get attention and which will not, but it’s still a surprise for me. I could mention that I would like to have my car washed and it will sit there for years; nev- ertheless, before I got home from work the very same day of making the egg comment, I had two dozen baby chicks in a box on my kitchen floor under the light of my grand- mother’s antique table lamp.

I blocked the doors so the super achiever dog would stay out of my eggs.

Since we did not have a chicken pen, I asked about the speed with which this project was progressing. I was re- minded that these precious little chicks would need to stay in the house until they got some size on them thus giving us time to build a pen, and the grand-brats would surely enjoy raising the ba- bies. Ahh, the grand-brats. . .now I see the correlation be- tween which projects will get done and which won’t see the light of day.

So we raised these two dozen little peeps in the kitch- en floor. The grand-brats came through and would ever not so gently handle them and they survived (both brats and chicks) in spite of them. We got a chicken pen built and nesting boxes prepared all in anticipation of fresh eggs. Of course it took a few months before we got our first egg and if I were the number

crunching kind of person I would tell you that first egg cost $235. That bargain price was because we were able to use scrap lumber and wire to build the pen, but I’m not a number crunching sort of person.

All was going well with the fresh egg plan. The girls were laying eggs by the dozen or so. We had enough for our use and to share. The grand-brats were learning responsibili- ty. Well, perhaps the biggest thing they learned was not to drop the eggs in the basket or to bang them together–that only took a few dozen-dozen eggs to learn.

Now the summer of the secondyearhasrolledaround, the cost is down to $5 a dozen, but we are no longer enjoying fresh eggs. The egg produc- tion had dropped drastically and I was on a mission to find out why when I saw our gold- en retriever nosing the door of the nesting boxes open and helping herself to my fresh eggs. I blocked the doors so the super achiever dog would stay out of my eggs and the egg production was still lower than anticipated.

I began to wonder wheth- er the girls were just too old to keep up when I went to get the morning eggs and was greeted by a forked tongue and the extended and dis- tended belly of a rather large black snake. While most of you know that my dear hub-

by loves those little buggers, I do not share his love for or fascination with those slith- ery things. In fact, I can tell you my opinion of snakes at the top of my lungs, which I promptly did. Thankfully hubby came with haste.

Hubby explained (very reasonably in his opinion) that he had an agreement with the snakes. They got the eggs on the floor and we got the ones in the nesting boxes. Then he wanted to know why I had a problem sharing eggs with the snake since he was such a goodlooking fellow.

It was his opinion that the snake would only eat one egg or so a day and we had plenty to share. I looked at the two eggs I held in my hand, looked at the two he had swallowed and the two more he had wrapped himself around and said, “I have two and he has four.” As we watched, he (the snake) ate the remaining two. Mean- while, another violator of the Hubby/snake agreement was in the nesting box wondering where HIS two eggs had gone. Hubby did take both snakes several miles away dropped them off and told them to stay away.

This week we are on va- cation. I intend to put this whole ugly egg-collecting ex- cursion behind me. Before I left I dropped enough moth- balls around the hen house that a quarter acre of our place smelled like my great-aunt’s basement. I removed all the leaves, straw, sticks and any green vegetation from all four sides of the hen house and raked the perimeter of the hen house for at least 100 yards. Dear ole’ hubby may not know how to vacate prop- erly, but I’m going to make darn sure those good-looking fellows have an extended va- cation and hopefully will for- get their way home.

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