Lily Passes

Lily was my Valentine's Day present in 2006. To heck with flowers, say it with chickens! She was a stunning adult white Sultan hen who was suffering from a VERY bad respiratory infection when we got her, doubly dangerous for a crested breed. She had to stay in the house for several weeks on antibiotics until it had cleared, but was obviously the worse for it and was never strong. She had no concept of getting the heck out of the way and tended to look a little too much like a pair of sweatsocks when she plonked herself down in the middle of the floor. Lily was very sweet and loving towards humans, but jealous of other chickens. Lily had her own idea of where she ranked in the pecking order and it was near the TOP, thank you. She 'talked' and chewed her words just like a Siamese cat. And Lily talked CONSTANTLY.

Lily picked fights with most of the other chickens, the roos included. Nothing serious, just enough to get the point across not to EVER mess with her. Because of this Lily ended up spending most of her time alone, and was having a bit of trouble coming to the horrible realization that she must now sleep in the coop with those other chicken-things. Instead, she always wanted to be in the house and at dusk when it was time to close up the coop, we'd find her waiting politely but a tad impatiently on the back porch for one of those idiot humans to open the door and let her in. Lily never really realized she was a chicken, and just decided to refuse to believe that particular nasty rumor.

We will miss her, she was only with us for two months but we just loved how special and unique she was.

Goodbye, darlin' Lil.

Happy (Headless) Easter!

...may you get all the best parts!

Happy Easter!

Thankfully, none of the 7 newly hatched chicks from this weekend are anywhere NEAR this color...

NO, she was NOT amused...

This Is Strangely Fitting...

OK, I couldn't resist...

Your Famous Last Words Will Be:

"I dunno, press the button and find out."

What Will Your Famous Last Words Be?

And So Boots Becomes A First-Time Mother...

 ...amazing creature...!

How Big IS This Little Guy's Nest, Anyway?!

Well, after taking Saturday off (I imagine it's some kind of Sparrow Union rule), our little guy had polished off another few inches of window screen today. We're up to 6 inches gone on the right side and 5 on the left, with the hole in the middle right slowly spreading to meet them:

Could be that he's told all of his little sparrow friends and they have all been having a whack at my window screen for laughs.

Ooh, me too! Me too!

Go to Wikipedia and look up your birthday (excluding the year). List three neat facts, two births (OK, I did three) and one death in your journal, including the year.

October 2nd

Neat Facts:
1836 - Naturalist Charles Darwin returns to Falmouth, England aboard the HMS Beagle after a five-year journey collecting biological data he will later use to develop his theory of evolution. (Go, Chuck!)

1959 - The Twilight Zone pilot premieres.

2001 - First palindromic MM-DD-YYYY date since August 31, 1380.

Births:
1800 - Nat Turner, American leader of slave uprising (d. 1831)

1890 - Groucho Marx, American comedian and actor (d. 1977)

1945 - Don McLean, American songwriter

Death:
1846 - Benjamin Waterhouse, Cambridge physician and medical professor (smallpox vaccine pioneer) (b. 1754)