Halloween Fire, pumpkins

 Who knew an ordinary couch could be so much fun? The cats just love it. The chase each other over, under, and around. I don’t begrudge them their fun, but I put a blanket over the couch to keep off the cat hair. Bingo is unclear on this concept.

Bingo! No cat hair on the couch!

Banjo can’t seem to figure out that you are not hiding when you still have one body part in plain view.

I know you're in there, Banjo.

We had our annual Halloween fire last weekend with Jane, Nancy, Paula, Kate, and Newton, Kate’s Corgi. Terry had been piling up brush and unusable scraps from the old deck all summer. The fire was soon burning briskly.

Burning brush and deck stairs

Jane brought the required apple cider doughnut. I was amazed to learn that Paula, who has spent her whole life in this area, had never had a cider doughnut! Can you use those words together in a sentence? Kate had never heard of cider doughnuts until she moved here from Wisconsin, but even she had eaten her share since relocating. So Paula had a delicious learning experience.

Mmm--cider doughnut! (Thanks for the pic, Nancy)

I took a picture of the group

Left to right: Kate, Newton, Jane, Nancy, Terry, and Paula (in the smoke)

While Paula took a picture of me.

Me taking the above picture

A few weeks ago, Kate told me about a video on TikTok demonstrating how to get chickens to carve your pumpkin. We had to try it. I removed just the outer dark orange shell. I thought the girls would be on it like flies to poop. Instead, they initially ignored it Full disclosure: it may have been because we were standing outside the fence with Newton, who was eager to herd them. At first, they all ran to the opposite side of the enclosure. After Kate and Newton left, the bravest of the girls came over to me, but still ignored the pumpkin.

Chickens ignoring the pumpkin

I gave them space and went back to the fire. When I came up to heat the chicken soup and add the noodles, the chickens had started in.

Starting in on the pumpkin eyes

The trouble is that they don’t know where to stop. 

The hens got carried away

By the next morning, the eyes and nose had fused into a heart, way too early for Valentine’s Day.

Happy Valentines?

It was obvious that I’d carved the mouth too low for the chickens to peck at it. Terry smashed the first pumpkin and left it for the girls to clean up. He carved a second pumpkin with three faces, trying to get the mouth up higher. The hens were able to limit themselves (I was afraid they would overdose on pumpkin and get the collywobbles), and did not go so crazy on the new pumpkin. After a day, here’s what we had.

Face 1 of 3

Face 2 of 3

Face 3 of 3, with a snowman nose

 I hope the girls had fun. Some of those faces look pretty scary!