A few good eggs

So I must confess.  I have said some bad things about our chickens, some very bad things.  I even killed one with my own bear hands.  Mind you, the one I killed was very sick, had a weird grapefruit like emulsion on her hinderlands and spewed liqidy poo all around our yard.  Not to mention she ate a fair amount of my vegetable garden, which is a no, no, for any creature other than the Decker 4. 

Some of you have wondered how that went... Let me just say that it went nothing like the hippie permaculture video I watched.  The only thing in common was me with rubber boots, a knife and apron and the chicken.  Everything else was nowhere near this peaceful loving transition of bird from one life to another.  I started with me desperately trying to catch the sick bird in the coop, and not the other two white ones.  Then, I had to flip her over and cradle her in my apron.  This is where things started going terribly wrong.  She managed to scratch me in the face (I don't blame her for this, I am sure I would have done much worse,) but then as if she knew her end was near, she puked all over me, in my face, in my bleeding cut, in my eyes, ALL over me. 

I must admit this is a pretty good strategy for saving your life.  But I had committed to getting rid of the birds, and the sick one was the trail run.  The next thing that went terribly wrong was that my knife was not strong enough and let's just say the I broke a henkil knife:(  Do you know how many free range organic chickens/eggs I could buy for the cost of one henkil knife.  The next thing that did not go at all like the hippie chick's video (no pun intended) was the neck breaking.  No details needed, just know, that chick is way stronger than she looks, because that is no easy task. 

Why, you might ask am I telling you all this.  Well, I was so traumatized by my experience that I could not bring my self to deal with the other four.  Now I will guiltily admit that I do sometimes intentionally leave the coop open at night thinking some predator might do the dirty work for me, but no such luck quite yet.  And, I guess that is a good thing.  We are back in the business of getting eggs.  We got three yesterday and one so far today.  This means that at least one of our new ones (Tyson 1-2) and one of our old ones (the two that survived the dogs) laid an egg. 

I am sure Aesop wrote a fable or two that could apply to my situation, but that would take a lot of brain power for me to connect a larger meaning.  For now, I am just happy I wimped out, but I am not sure if I will be keeping the coop closed at night forever,  Sometimes this chicken raising is for the birds.