In Other News...

Chickens used to be jungle birds long before man decided to team up with them in such domestic persuits as cock-fighting, making Coq-Au-Vin, and stealing their eggs. Before we invented a special wire to keep them in cages, they lived in trees. Though they are hundreds of years into their domesticity, they still have the urge to perch. My girls have a perch inside their hen-house, but they needed one to sit on during the day. So I made one using rotted old wood and a gorgeously fat bamboo stick from Mark and Lisa's own bamboo forest.
Here is Dot. She likes to be up high. But all of the girls were suspicious of this new feature in their run. They gave it sidelong glances the whole first day; to see if it was still there; to see if it had suddenly turned into a fox; to see if it would disappear in a puff of smoke. Now that the initial period of deep suspicion is over, I have caught them perching.


Pearl is turning out to be a fantastic layer. Unless someone else has started laying too, she has given us five eggs in six days. WOW. And Max has actually eaten one of them in a strange fit of healthy eating.

Max has started first grade now. He said he doesn't like it much. But he came home unscathed and in pretty good spirits. Seeing him walking to school this morning in a foot-dragging mopey fashion with his back-pack hanging on him like an albatross on his shoulders, he looked like such a big kid. It doesn't make me want to cry. It's just another interesting and cool part of the great evolution in this kid-rearing gig. He's my boy; my handsome, ascerbic, negative, funny, school-aged boy. And I love the bejeezus out of him.

I have a lot of work to do before Max comes home from school, so I'll catch you all later.