Chicken Update - Eep!

In the loooong span of time since I last spoke of the chickens, not too much has happened. We are down to 11 (from the original 16), due to a variety of factors. We lost the last two to our new puppy, and at least that is an easily preventable thing. We have him on a run while they're out during the day, and at night he roams around and annoys the hell out of Zora. He doesn't seem to mind too terribly much (after the first few days of caterwauling... oh yes. Dogs are capable of it...), and we love his little wiggly self.

But I digress.

Today was one of those days that started off normally for me, and by normal I mean it was quite out of the ordinary.

I decided that I needed to go to the store before work, and so thought that getting dressed might be a good idea. I went into the new living room we have (door pending. Remember this fact for later) to get dressed.

And I found this:

Henrietta

Yup. That's the prodigal hen, Henrietta, nestled in as comfy as you please on our love seat with the dirty work clothes (mine), and Xbox controller (his).

Now just to be clear - we do NOT keep the chickens in the house. They have their own palace, and I really don't need chicken poop inside. Nor will I ever purchase these. (never ever ever) She let herself in through the semi-covered tarp door we've got hanging up, and made herself right at home.

I took her picture, and texted it to the manfriend (and some other people) with a snarky text somewhere along the lines of "this is what happens when you spoil a chicken!". When I went to move her and run her off back outside, I realized her eyes were starting to close and she was breathing funny. And her tail bobbed a few times. It hit me that she was laying an effing egg on my couch and so, like any good blogger, I recorded it:

You can hear my gasp of recognition, and if you look reeeeeaaallly closely you can see the egg plop out. Kinda cool.

She did not know what to think of the whole thing, and stood there dazed for a good 1 or 2 minutes:

What just happened?

After standing there like a chicken in headlights, she started to squawk:

At which point I picked her up, petted her for a little bit (she is the prodigal hen, after all), and took her back outside. I took the egg and put it in the fridge. Then I called my grandmother and my mother (both MASTERS at oohing, aahing, and expressing copious amounts of general excitement, and only requiring a phone call to do so), and went to work.

I am so proud of my chicken! I can't wait for the other ladies to follow suit, or at least for when I can get them to lay in the coop if they have indeed started already, and I am so so so very happy that nature is taking it's natural course. We try to interfere with them as little as possible (as I say that, the thoughts of the manfriend putting the two week old chick on zora's head, toting around Big Bunny, etc, comes to mind...but no matter...), yet I still am relieved to see them doing the whole chicken thing.

The spawn and I will spend today trying to get them some nesting accommodations that they might be persuaded to use that's not my furniture - wish us luck!