Charlie's girls have nothing to fear! "I've got your back, girls, " he says.

These warm autumn days have given Charlie a chance to spend his days outside with “the girls.”  I wish he could live out there with them all the time, but there are two problems with that.  First, he’s just a little banty frizzle rooster, and although his feathers are absolutely delightful to look at, they don’t offer much insulation.  Alas, he’s really just a silly little accessory rooster even though he thinks of himself as a very brave and mighty fellow. Second, a particular set of neighbors complained to us about the crowing back when we had full size roosters outdoors.  So Charlie’s fate is sealed; he lives in the house.  He has his own roomy coop (a dog kennel) and during the days that are too cold to go outside, he runs around the house wearing his little chicken diaper.  Chickens, unlike bunnies and cats, cannot be trained to use a litter box as far as I know.

I have been letting all the pets run around the yard on nice mornings.  Everyone is great about staying in the yard.  The girls have discovered our wild areas and have become voracious consumers of the ripe Oregon Grape berries.  I had some thoughts of collecting the berries myself and making Oregon Grape jam, but I think I’ll forget that for this year and let them enjoy their treat.  In the mid-afternoon I put all the chickens away because we have kids tromping through the yard on their way home from school, and they sometimes forget to close the neighbor’s gate when they pass through it.  This is a problem because that is the neighbor with the big white husky dog that killed our beautiful Buttercup a year and a half ago.  Since then, the neighbors gave the dog “Chicken Aversion” training, but I still don’t trust him, and I don’t want to have to follow another trail of feathers into the bushes.  Buttercup was the grand matriarch of the group and I bet she sacrificed herself to save the others.  We are so lucky to have our gentle border collie, MacKenzie, who is never aggressive toward any of our animals.  I wonder if she would have defended Buttercup if she had been present during the attack?  Guess I’ll never know!

Dear Buttercup RIP