Chickens!

When my cousin’s and I were little, my grandma used to tell us stories about my dad and his brother’s antics while growing up.  It was awesome. And although the themes of her stories these days revolve around Kumidan, the lack of vegetables in her diet, my grandpa falling over, and her fights with the nurse, she’s still got a knack for telling some of the classics.   One of my favorites I was able to hear again while I was in Florida back in December was about how my Uncle randomly brought home some chickens one days. I’m gonna spare you the details, but all you gotta know is that he got some, and then kept them in the basement. All in all, the 70’s sound like they were pretty freakin’ sweet.

Well, in taking after my uncle, today I bought two real, live chickens!  Fortunately for me though, I don’t have a basement, so instead I’m planning on keeping them in the chicken coop in my back yard.  So, I’m now the proud owner of what will hopefully be the start of a successful chicken family living inside my new chicken coop.

My Chicken Coop!

Originally, it wasn’t supposed to happen until Saturday.  But when life throws you lemons, you..ugh…take advantage of the fact that you’re already in the city with your friends and buy the chickens then.  Yeah, I think that’s how that expression goes…

So anyways, I took my friends Elizio and Betinho to the city today to run some errands.  I brought some walkie-talkies back from the States for all the kids in my neighborhood to play with, and they’ve gotten a kick out of them so far.  They always come over and ask for them.  But today, we took them to the city.  I had to go visit Anna and our new site-mate Jeanette first for something, but told them that we’d meet up afterwards. I gave them one of the walkie-talkies (they call them telephones) and told them a time to be in the city.  Sure enough, about ten minutes before we were supposed to meet, I turned on the radio to hear them jabbering away like I had been online the entire time.  We did a little shopping, and then, because we were already passing the guys selling chickens, we bought two.  300 mets, which is just about ten dollars.  A steal if you ask me.

We marched back home excited to show the chicken their new home.  I’ll also admit that I was equally excited or them to start making baby chickens.

The walk home was a long one as question after question ran through my mind:  How is this all going to go down?  How will they know that my coop is their house?  What would they eat?  Were they just gonna run away?  When are they gonna fall in love and making more chicken?  If I were to get hungry one day, could I just up and eat one?  You know, typical stuff any new chicken owner would think…

Chickens! inspecting their new digs under my clean laundry.

All my questions were answered upon arrival.  Elizio immediately went into the ritual that apparently needs to occur when chickens are brought to a new home.  I, meanwhile, grabbed my camera to film it. The video is posted below.  If you’re impatient, fast forward to about the three minute mark where he grabs each chicken and shows it how to enter and exit its new home all the while talking to it in Macua.

UPDATE: March 15th – I’ve got EGGS! Check it out! I’ve got eggs!

Coming soon...More chickens!

UPDATE – March 17th – Two more eggs!
No picture, but there are two more egg’s in the coop! Shit yeah, at this rate I’ll be eating omelets by next week.  I think?

Another UPDATE - April 8th - This Hen is committed.  She's got ten eggs now and has hunkered down on top of them.  Apart from taking about ten minutes a day here and there to roll around in the dirty, she pretty much spends all her time sitting on them in some crazy trance where she doesn't blink or acknowledge my existence no matter how close I get.