Chickens are Not Dumb

Out of all my chickens and birds, I had 2 that were outstanding personalities. It all started when a young man came to help me build a hutch, one day. He was wearing heavy boots and I had noticed my young 'Turkey Girl' hanging around but I hadn't noticed as problem until later.

At the end of the day and all the chickens were headed out to the hen house, I noticed Turkey Girl (as I called her) limp a couple times and stop right in the middle of the big yard used for parking the big equipment during harvest.

I noticed that all the birds were almost tucked in for the night but Turkey Girl still stood out in the yard. I picked her up and noticed that sometimes during the day, her middle toe had gotten broken. I carried her out to the hen house and sat her down. I was a strange bird mommy and insisted every body get up off the ground for the night. So when I realized she couldn't jump up on the perch, I picked her up and held her over the perch while she got her balance.

The next morning, everybody went running out of the chicken yard, racing each other for the first bug. Everybody, that it, except Turkey Girl. I took pity on her and carried her to the food and then over to our front yard, where she could limp around and hunt bugs.

When I noticed that every time she spied a bug and tried to get to it, the other birds ran to beat her to it. Silly me, I went hunting grass hoppers for her.

Each time I brought her a grasshopper, I'd shout out, "Gotcha One!" She soon learned that when I call that out, it meant a treat for her. That worked out great for a couple days but then the big boss rooster caught on to what I was doing, ran and snatched the grasshopper from my fist before I could get it to Turkey Girl. The battle began.

Before long, when I went out to catch grasshoppers, I was making sure I had more than one, so I could manage to get at least one to my little Turkey Girl.

After a week of this crazy activity, I was bringing a plastic bag with me, as now the whole flock was catching on and I had to fight my way through to Turkey Girl, to get her a snack.

Then the day came. I was a quarter mile from home, walking down the dirt road and snatching these huge grasshoppers off the pecan trees that grew beside the road. When I turned to go home, I decided to cut across the wheat field. I climbed the fence and started across the 2' foot high wheat plants.

I was barely into the field when I happened to look up toward the house and I saw something....didn't know what....something white flicker above the wheat and then was gone. A few seconds later, I saw it again. What was that that kept popping up out of the wheat? It was getting closer and closer and finally I realized....it was Mr. Boss man the rooster!

Evidently he was watching for me and came running across the wheat, toward me. Since he was too short to see over the wheat, to keep an eye on me, he kept jumping up to get a better aim.

"Oh, no! you don't" as I saw him getting closer. I held the bag full of grasshoppers, high over my head and out of his reach. He caught up with me and then followed along, jumping up as high as he could, trying to get hold of that bag. I ran ahead of him and yelling, "Stop that! No you don't!"

I finally reached the house and ran around to the front where all the birds were and called out to Turkey Girl, "gotcha one", brought the bag down to grab a grasshopper and......it was EMPTY!!!!!!!!!! A hole torn in the bottom and all my catch was gone. Now here stood Turkey Girl expectantly and I had nothing.

I had to go hunting again. :)