I’ve learned a few things in the course of keeping chickens for seven years. But it wasn’t until this morning that I discovered it’s a bad idea to feed your hens when you have a loose bandage on your hand.
Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, eat outside, in a low rectangular pen that’s covered with chicken wire. The only way for a human to conveniently reach into the pen is through a hinged lid that runs across the top, at the north end. But there it was, at the inaccessible south end: a Band-Aid, just inside the chicken wire. I assume it slipped off my finger while I was placing food and water bowls in the north end of the pen and one of the mischievous beasties, having decided it was inedible, carried it over to the south end. For the hell of it.
Of course, the Band-Aid was just far enough from the wire to be unreachable, even with needle nose pliers. So I instructed “the girls” to leave the bandage where it was (like that would do any good), trudged back to the garage, and retrieved a thin garden stake. The Band-Aid was still in place when I got back, so I stuck the stake through the wire. After a few failed attempts, I managed to slowly drag the bandage right up to the enclosure, where I was able to reach in with two fingers and tease it out.
The two witnesses to this delicate maneuver probably found it entertaining. Or so I assume. Although Nellie and Hope paid close attention to my antics, they wore their best poker faces.
Nellie and Hope, our Rhode Island Reds, eat outside, in a low rectangular pen that’s covered with chicken wire. The only way for a human to conveniently reach into the pen is through a hinged lid that runs across the top, at the north end. But there it was, at the inaccessible south end: a Band-Aid, just inside the chicken wire. I assume it slipped off my finger while I was placing food and water bowls in the north end of the pen and one of the mischievous beasties, having decided it was inedible, carried it over to the south end. For the hell of it.
Of course, the Band-Aid was just far enough from the wire to be unreachable, even with needle nose pliers. So I instructed “the girls” to leave the bandage where it was (like that would do any good), trudged back to the garage, and retrieved a thin garden stake. The Band-Aid was still in place when I got back, so I stuck the stake through the wire. After a few failed attempts, I managed to slowly drag the bandage right up to the enclosure, where I was able to reach in with two fingers and tease it out.
The two witnesses to this delicate maneuver probably found it entertaining. Or so I assume. Although Nellie and Hope paid close attention to my antics, they wore their best poker faces.
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