Hens don't crow

If I don’t get something posted tonight, it will be another week (or more) before the next opportunity. This is the time of year when I have the most intense retirement envy. My job really gets in the way of the harvest. I spent all day Saturday and Sunday either in the garden picking vegetables or in the kitchen washing, blanching, peeling, pickling, roasting, canning and doing all the other tasks associated with “putting up.” Yesterday I ran the dishwasher twice and washed every pan in the kitchen three times. Today I spent updating course materials for Unit 3 of my online Plant Science course. I didn’t get as far as I hoped, but at least I could sit down. Jane joined us for a Labor Day supper of charcoal-grilled hamburgers, potato salad, and corn casserole made from the very last sweet corn. Sweet corn, done. Check.  And peach pie with the last of the Rich Haven peaches. The Hale Havens and the remainder of the Rich Havens have been eaten, given away, frozen, canned, dried, or pickled. Check.

Two weeks ago, Terry mentioned that he had seen a beautiful red flower down by the creek. Could it be that one of my cardinal flowers had survived the flood? I hadn’t seen any sign of any of the native plants I’d tried to establish on the creek bank when the waters receded. Hilda and I walked down there Tuesday to see it for ourselves. And indeed, it was a cardinal flower!

Cardinal flower

Jackie crowed twice on Thursday. He hasn’t crowed since, but crowing even once is definitive. Hens don’t crow. Also, he’s taken to pursuing the girls with increasing ardor. Now that he’s got some heft to him, they aren’t ignoring him quite so much. “You’re not going to make me get rid of him, are you?” Hilda asked me.

“Only if he starts attacking us when we go into the yard,” I replied. He’s been amazingly docile for a rooster, so much so that before the crowing incident, I was pretty convinced he was a hen. So we’ll see. Meanwhile, he becomes more beautiful every day as his grown-up feathers develop. His wings are nearly white now, with the feathers delicately tipped with black. His crest, formerly pure black, is accented with white. Most remarkable is that his feathers shine with an iridescent green when the light strikes him just right.

White accents on Jackie's crest

My best attempt at capturing the iridescent green on Jackie's back and tail. Can you see it?

A couple of weeks ago, I had an overnight at Jane’s house because I had a doctor’s appointment in Elgin at the crack of dawn. That evening, Hilda couldn’t find Jackie when it was time to close the coop for the night. She looked and looked. Not in the coop. Not in the yard. She finally looked up, and there was Jackie on the ridgepole of the coop roof. “Did you take a picture for my blog?” I asked when she told me the story.

“No,” she said, “I was only concerned with getting him down.”

Did she call Terry to help? No, she did not. My 82-year-old mother gets out the ladder instead. Dad got a long pole and between the two of them, they got Jackie off the roof and into the coop.

“So this morning, Jackie had her wings clipped,” she concluded (this was before his gender was known). Terry held Jackie, and Hilda cut the tips off his flight feathers on one side. That’s all it involves. It doesn’t hurt the bird. It’s similar to clipping a nail. The effect is to throw the bird off balance so it can’t get any height. Maybe he’ll get big enough that it won’t have to be done again. All of our hens are too heavy to fly anymore.