Chicken With Attitude

We ate a turkey last night for dinner. So I made some stock from the neck, liver, etc... you know... the "giblets".

Made some mashed potatoes, a little "box stuffing" and some veggies.
This kind of dinner should require company. It's a lot of work, but the Prospector had this frozen turkey and wanted to eat it. We called our neighbor to come for dinner but he couldn't make it... so we had a big turkey dinner all by ourselves. We will have Turkey for quite a few nights and more. Soup maybe... sandwiches... etc. We will not waste any of it.
Yesterday the wind blew, the rain came and it was cold... really cold. Today the sun shines again.
The Prospector is still hurting from his encounter with a tree branch and a retaining wall so I'm on duty for much of the farm feeding.

This morning I considered having CHICKEN for dinner tonight instead of turkey.
I walked up to the chicken house.

 Gave them the potato peels and some old tomatoes.  I noticed that two of the hens were missing. I change the outside water and went into the hen house to look for the hens. The first thing I saw was one of the big hens in one of the small nests.

All squished in there like she thought she was a banty. She never gets up in these small boxes.
The big community nest only had one hen inside of it.

ONE HEN... It wasn't like the big box was crowded or anything.
The hen stuffed into the little box might have been having a bad day, so maybe she decided to do her thing in the little box... alone. We all have days like this.
I understood. But I wanted a picture.
I ran for the camera (of course) and came back in to take her portrait. I would have named it HEN IN DENIAL or something.
That's when all hell broke loose.
She obviously didn't want her picture taken while she was laying an egg.
She turned and started making a god awful noise.

And then she stuck her head out of the box and..."Whoa, chicken mama, back away from the human."

She was not a happy hen.
I actually took this photo from half way across the hen house and cropped it.
I wasn't about to get close to her. She was, as the old saying goes, "mad as a wet hen".
(Now I know what that expression means.)
She came at me like a hen with PMS. and was making a high pitched, nasty sound.
I just wanted a picture of her in that little box... but you would have thought I wanted her for dinner. As I was backing away from her, I looked over and saw Squeakie.

 She was watching all of this. I think she was placing bets on the outcome.... or, she was too afraid to leave.
Napoleon, the rooster, and the other hens were not getting anywhere near the doorway but they were listening to the commotion.
I backed out of the hen house and left.
As I walked down to the driveway, Annibel greeted me.

She had that wise, "Well, what's going on" look. The cat expression that says,
 "Did you kill one for me? I like the little ones best."

We walked back to the house.
I'm trying to be more chicken friendly around here but....
That chicken better lay an egg today.
She is a marked hen.