Cock of the Walk

I left to take a walk this afternoon, and almost turned back to get my new P&S digicam. "Nah, it's just the neighborhood, don't be a putz," I thought to myself. Well, now I know better. I was turning the corner from Martinazzi to Blake and there on the hill above me were a chicken and a rooster, calmly pecking in loose dirt and grass, either for seeds or bugs. I looked further up the hill, saw a wood fence, and beyond that, a backyard that had what looked like a circular wire mesh enclosure. A chicken pen?

I walked back up Martinazzi and around the corner onto Talawa, then up to the front door of the house behind which I'd seen the birds. Rang the doorbell, waited. No answer. Oh, well. So I looped back around back and continued my walk. The chickens were still there, still pecking away. My guess is that they were able to flutter over the wire enclosure and either walked through a gap in the wood fence or jumped it.

I didn't try to pick them up and put them into the backyard, for two reasons:

1. I'm not a farmboy, so I don't have any experience handling roosters, or even chickens. I had no desire to get scratched.


2. They may not have lived in the backyard they were nearest.

The thought of that second point amuses me.