I haven't written much about the Peeps because they are no longer Peeps. If they were kids, they would be somewhere between adolescence young adulthood. The combs have not fully developed and they look kind of like mangy buzzards that are hygienically challenged. They really cute when they were young they have dug up about fifty dollars in flowers and shrubs and they constantly crap on my walk so they aren't nearly as cute now.
The neighbor that owns the fowls came over yesterday evening after dark to round them up. Seven of them were roosting in my dogwood tree on low limbs. The neighbor and one of his friends scooped them in quickly and put them in a plywood chicken box. There was another brood in the huckleberry bush/tree and the chicken catchers did not fair as well. They managed to claw their way up high enough to capture three of the hens but the young rooster bolted out of the tree and hit the ground running. I can tell you this: chickens are a lot faster than they look. They tried to hem the little booger up in a corner where my backyard fence attaches to my house. I was helping by holding the flashlight. The little rooster ran between my neighbors legs and the other guy dove after it but came up with nothing but leaves and pine cones. I ran around to try and head the critter off at the pass.
We all hustled back around to the front yard and chased that chicken for twenty minutes. I looked in the living room through the front glass and Jilda was falling off the couch, laughing uncontrollably. It wasn't nearly as funny to me last night but looking back, had we captured this little episode on video tape, I could probably have been a star on UTube.
Fortunately the neighbor managed to snatch the chicken by the tail feathers and haul it in. When we were finished and checking our wounds, he told me that he was moving away so and that we would not have to contend with the chickens any more. I didn't have the heart to tell him about all the flowers they dug up so I shook his hand and told him good luck.
I won't miss the chickens.
My wife was raised on a farm and tells about plucking chickens out of trees. Her father let them roam so they had to wait until the chickens had roosted before they could catch them. She hated to do it because the birds would squawk and peck at her hands.
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