When you live in Canada, even in the southernmost parts (the city will still remain nameless until town council stops laughing and makes chicken husbandry ok) ya just get tired of Winter. And since this was a long and cold one, Spring has sprung that much sweeter. Last week, finally, it got warm enough that I felt the girls could go out into the real world. We took a couple out for a short stroll (I didn't want them to get a chill). At first they didn't know what to do - they just stood there in the grass. When they took their first tentative steps it was like a baby taking her first step on foreign material - those sensory receptors in the feet just don't know what to do with that information. Then one shyly walked over to me, stood on my shoe under the shelter of my pant leg. The second chick followed suit, on the same foot, facing the opposite way. I got a little misty...Several days and several more degrees warmer, we took the whole posse out. Again, they all stood, not sure what to do with this alien landscape. Instinct took over shortly thereafter and soon they were scratching and pecking for bugs like old hens in the barnyard. They wandered in a little clump like 5 year olds around the soccer ball. And then after half an hour of "chicken play-time" they simultaneously stopped moving. I relocated the exhausted and slightly stunned fowl back to the safety of their plastic box. Said box is getting mighty small. I take the girls out for CPT each day now partly as entertainment for BCF jr., partly out of chicken-mommy guilt. See subsequent posts for the coop building extravaganza!
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