the sleeping porch

this summer was a biatch. no rain and the hundreds have just gone on and on. the idea of september doesn't even scare them away. the silver lining is you don't have to go buy hay if you have chickens. just go rake your yard and you got yourself a hay party.

the girls have kept cool this summer. the coop looks like this all day. passionvine (which has not skipped a bit all summer) has covered it and has shielded the girls from sun. every morning, i go out to change their water and to feed them and their coop reminds me of an oldfashioned sleeping porch. in my mind, that makes me bitch less since the silver lining is modern society's air conditioning.

we lost sweet claudia earlier this summer. i found her stretched out behind the coop with Xs in her eyes, looking like one of those toy rubber chickens. there is hardly any room between the coop and the wall so deadchicken removal is a bit of a maneuver. add that the trash had just been picked up fifteen minutes before and you have got yourself a girl with ?s in her eyes.

add the fact that my car was parked at the house where my daughter was petsitting to make it look like someone was home at their house and you have a girl on a three-speed bike with a deadchicken in a target bag which her feet hanging out dangling from the handlebars while looking for a trashcan whose trash has not been picked up since chicken slowroasted at 100 degrees for a week is not going to be found on food network.

the girls back on their sleeping porch must have been thinking "good lawdy, it is hawt. the silver lining is that we could be claudia."