October 13, 2010: Goldie and Ellie raise holy H#$%......

October 13, 2010

Weds., 10:04 am

We have a new problem this morning.  At 8 am, I was awakened by Goldie sounding off at the top of her lungs.  I went out and sure enough, no egg yet, but a new development instead......  Ellie was sitting in the nest waiting to lay an egg - which I knew was coming since she didn’t lay yesterday.  However, a short time later, Goldie started sounding off again.  What the h?  So I walked out AGAIN.  Now she has sounded off about six times.  I’m sure my neighbors are absolutely loving me right about now, thank goodness most are already at work!  Well, I finally figured it out, Goldie is mad that Ellie is in her nest because she is ready to lay her egg and is trying to tell Ellie, “GET OUT OF MY NEST!  I CHOSE THIS NEST FIRST!”  When Goldie would get near the nest though, Ellie would squawk a warning at her.  Then, it got interesting, Goldie wouldn’t stop sounding off, so then Ellie started sounding off too, as if they were having a screaming match:  “Leave me alone damn it, I’m doing the best I can and can’t speed the process up.  You’re just going to have to wait Goldie!!!”  Now as I type this, Ellie is squawking again, but not Goldie, so maybe she HAS finally laid? 

Farrah got in on the act as well, hopping up again and laying outside the box next to Ellie, offering moral support.  In addition, Hawkeye has been going in and out of the bottom boxes.  Chanel is probably wondering what on earth is going on and is taking advantage of the distraction to nibble food before the others chase her away.

I did my best to try and coax Goldie to another box to lay but she was having none of it.  My fear now is that they will ALL want to lay in the same box (except Raven who has chosen a different box).  At one point, I picked Goldie up and cradled her in the crook of my left arm while I petted her with my right hand, she even laid her head down on my arm and let me scratch her head, murmuring softly.  Her feathers are a bit stuck together from getting watermelon juice and then dirt on them so I was trying to loosen them up.  I thought for awhile she was going to lay her egg on my arm. 

Hah, hah, Ellie is out of the nest, so her cackling must’ve been to announce she laid.  Now I wonder if all the theories about why they announce in the first place may be wrong???  Maybe instead they are saying, “Get out of the nest, it’s my turn!” even perhaps in the wild, maybe they share nests and take turns raising the young???

Sure enough, I went out there, new chicken shaped wire egg basket (purchased from the Antique Store yesterday) in hand, and Ellie had laid and Goldie was already in the box rolling Ellie’s egg underneath her.  I reached in and pulled Ellie’s egg out and gently placed it in the egg basket.  I almost wanted to take a picture of the egg in the basket, a very nostalgic and charming picture

indeed.  I felt like Laura Ingall’s on Little House on the Prairie, coming in with the day’s cache.

Oh, the egg basket.....years ago, Woodie, the 85 year old neighbor that asked me to marry him (yes seriously, senility does strange things to you), gave me an old white wire antique egg basket.  (A funny aside, when I finally told his grown children WHY I wasn’t going over to visit their father as much, they laughed and his daughter said, “Well, he always WAS the cock of the roost!”  I didn’t think it was so funny at the time, but considering I am now writing about keeping chickens and everything “chicken”, it does have some humor in it.) 

He also collected covered chicken dishes, where the top was a hen laying and the bottom part was her nest.  He had given me one of those as well.  I ended up selling the wire basket in a garage sale to a woman who, recognizing it for what it was, snatched it up.  I thought I would never have occasion to use it and it was gathering dust in my garage.  Lately, I had really been regretting that decision, especially because of who gave it to me and the nostalgia behind it, it was “the real thing” I suppose.  And Woodie, moved to a nursing home and I am not even sure he is still among us.  Anyway, I went on the hunt yesterday to an antique store, and though, not old, found a black wire basket in the shape of a chicken, with little carrying handles, so that became my egg basket.  I had found another, in plain steel that was collapsible, which probably was the real McKoy, but it did not appeal to me.  So now, Mrs. Chicken Basket sits proudly on the corner of my hearth, next to the door, waiting to do her egg-collecting duty.