Free as Birds

They flew the coop.

Our hens had all but stopped laying, and their days were numbered in our backyard. The question was, where...or how. The popular suggestion from our former farming relations has been fairly consistent and involves a clothesline, a meat cleaver, and a stew pot.

None of that for us thank you. We took the wimp's way out.

Craig's List can solve almost any bad case of the how-to-get-rid-of-this blues. Once again, it came through for us in a big way. Honestly, we expected to send them off to someone else's pot. "Embrace the food chain" empowerment sentiments are all well and good until you've shared playground equipment with an animal. At this point, neither of us were willing to stand up and handle the meat cleaver... or whatever.

Hurray! No stew pot for these ladies! A nice gentlemen from Pinehaven Farm picked up our lovely brood (the four remaining ones.... anyway) and brought them to their retirement home. They are now proud (if confused) members of a petting zoo. They can live out their days to the sounds of happy children playing, until the end swoops in with a dramatic "hoot, hoot."

Sure, he mentioned an owl problem at the farm, along with a new fox family that moved in this summer. It has to be better than a stew pot, right? And we can honestly say, the chickens ran off to join a petting zoo. The backyard is a quiet place now, awaiting new residents next summer.