Chicken Update

We now have four big old chickens on top of our dryer. What were once adorable little balls of fuzz are now scowling fowl with scaly legs who poop actual turds that stink. It's like having teenagers.

Cleaning the cage has become a nasty job, sort of like dealing with those trucker poops that start appearing in the Pampers once your little darling starts in on the real food. It's time to get them out of garage and into their own coop. Today, after five days away, I heard my first actual cluck.

Now we just have to finish the chicken run. And let me tell you, the coop was cake compared to the run (basically a big wood-framed box with chicken wire walls that must be impervious to all urban vermin). It's a good thing I'm around though, because just between you and me, the Mister, great as he is, sucks at figuring out how to build a chicken run. Handy with a circular saw, though.

We're hoping they'll be out in their own house by Friday. And then it's just more scratching and perching and eating until they get big enough to start earning their keep with some eggs (stay tuned for a name-the-date-of-the-first-egg contest with cool prizes). Unless, of course, Tilly is a rooster, which we suspect she is. Then, I don't know. Anyone handy with an ax?

A thing I like

This story by Lisa Belkin in New York Times Magazine about the demise of helicopter parenting. Thwap, thwap, crash.