May 11^th

I’ve turned into a monster.  I find myself scouring the yard constantly for tasty creatures to feed my growing girls.  More often than not I find them in my house!  I’m going to stop protesting that my house is clean because obviously it’s a cesspool, teeming with vermin. I can’t go a day without finding a beetle or some other kind of bug, grabbing it between two fingers and sticking the poor bastard between the bars of the “death cage”. 

Rowdy & Sam Stand Guard

No matter how hard I try, I can never give the morsel to anyone but Violet.  She is the smartest, greediest bird in creation.  Often, however, one of her sisters is able to wrest the victim from her beak, but they never get first chomp.  Jim has never been a fan of crawling, slithering or buzzing things, but even he is getting in on the act.  This morning he emerged from the bathroom covered in shaving cream (face, not legs) and nonchalantly handed me a bug.  I took it without comment and dropped it in the cage.  On my morning walk I pick up near-dead but still-buzzing cicadas (Alabama is in the midst of the 13-year locust invasion, look it up) so my chicks have been feasting on the loud bugs for a week now.  They prefer living morsels but will tear apart a dead one in a pinch.  I stop short on catching roly-polys because I’ve always had a soft spot for the little guys.  Same goes for lady bugs, but who knows where this madness will end?  I never thought I’d be peeling flies of my swatter for my chickens and then calmly washing my hands.  When I do this, my husband looks at me in disgust, shakes his head and mutters one word…chickens.  Jim’s a keeper.