Last night as I was putting Lindsay to bed, Neil and I heard the most horrible screaming sounds. I thought it was our cat having a seizure, but Neil realized it was coming from the backyard. It didn’t take another second to realize that it was our chickens and they were under attack.

Neil, very bravely, ran outside armed with a flashlight and a long stick. Raccoons can be very vicious, so this was putting himself at risk of being attacked. When he went out there, the raccoon was inside the large run and was battling with our silver-laced Polish hen Andie. The raccoon ran away when Neil went in there, so fortunately Neil didn’t have to fight it off. The run was filled with Andie’s feathers, but there didn’t seem to be blood anywhere.

The little door on the coop showed signs of being pried off by strong raccoon hands, so we couldn’t just lock it up and go to bed with a clear conscience. Especially since the raccoon was still sitting in the tree watching the coop. I stood guard, while Neil rigged some raccoon-proofing. The ropes actually run through the inside of the coop and underneath it, so there was no way a raccoon was going to get inside.

Andie was understandably rattled. She was pacing back and forth in the run to the point that I was worried that she either had a head injury or was going into shock. Finally she went to bed and is fine this morning. Neil was impressed at the fight she put up against the raccoon. Lulu (the one who fearlessly attacks me) hid in the coop like a big coward.

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My big Easter Egger hen Lulu has been extremely vocal for about a week now. I’m not sure if she misses her sister, or if she’s bored, or what’s going on. Usually loud vocalizations mean that the hens are laying an egg. Lulu is in the middle of molting her feathers, so she’s not laying. I keep checking for eggs, but no dice.

She was pacing around in her run, so I thought she might be bored and let her roam around in my garden. That helped with the noise. I don’t always want them loose in the yard. Sometimes we are eating in the garden and they get curious and fly up onto the table. Yuck. And periodically we have a hawk who perches in the tree overlooking our garden. Hawks love chicken as much as humans do.

I decided to do what the zookeepers do to keep their animals from getting bored and put in a food toy. I screwed a hook into the base of a cabbage and hung it up in the coop tether ball style. The video above isn’t of my hens. So far my hens haven’t discovered the cabbage. I went in there and “pecked” at the cabbage and they wolfed down the the cabbage bits. But if they think that I’m going to sit in there pecking off bite-sized bits of cabbage for them, they have another thing coming to them. It will be interesting to see if they get as much enjoyment from this cabbage as the hens in the video have gotten. Hopefully I won’t have a dried-up cabbage hanging in the coop in a week!

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The strangest thing started to happen to Lulu after Edie died. She started to get very aggressive with me. Whenever I went into the coop, she would lunge at me and peck the bejeesus out of whatever she could reach. That was usually my foot and with the summer being so hot, I was usually very exposed in flip flops. I couldn’t figure out why she had turned from a friendly hen into an attack hen. When I mentioned it to my husband, he said that she wasn’t doing it to him. I have to admit that I was a little frightened to go in the coop because of her attacks. Stooping over to change her water or food left me in a very vulnerable position.

I started to bring a stick in the coop with me to fend off her attacks. I used the stick defensively and backed out as quickly as I could. I knew that when you make changes to your flock (with either additions or in my case subtractions) a scuffle generally ensues. I guess Edie was the top hen and now Lulu wanted the job. The crazy thing was that she was fighting me for the position. So, she thought I was a chicken. My husband wasn’t a chicken in her eyes. Interesting.

I realized that the only way to stop these attacks from Lulu would be to assert my dominance over her. I would have to go into the coop and kick some chicken butt! I suited up for the occasion with socks, sneakers, jeans, long sleeves and gardening gloves and sunglasses. A few very amused friends wanted to be spectators, but I needed to do this without witnesses. It’s embarrassing enough that I had to wrestle my chicken, but I didn’t want a cheering section. Or a laughing section more likely.

I went into the coop banging the door open and stomping around. Lulu instantly geared up for the fight by lunging at my feet. I booted her across the coop. (For the record, I am a bleeding hearted animal lover, who used to miss the school bus when it rained because I was rescuing worms out of the rain gutters) So (gently) kicking and scaring my chickens was particularly unpalatable to me. Lulu put up a good fight and kept coming back at me. I yelled “NO!” and went after her. I kept on the offensive until she finally backed into the smaller run. I guess I had won, but I felt horrible. Andie was scared of me also.

A week or so has gone by and we no longer have any problems. Lulu tried once to lunge at me, but I shouted “No” and stomped in her direction. We are friends again and she comes when I call her and lets me pick her up. Andie doesn’t seem to remember me scaring her either. So all in all I think that the experiment worked and I am now the top hen. Is that a resumé item?

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Instead of weeding through all the papers and bills and other things that have accumulated on my desk during the time my kiddo wasn’t in either camp or school, I did something a lot more fun. I got to talk to a bunch of people about my chickens.

At 8am Lou Manfredini and his camera crew came by to talk to me about backyard chicken keeping for an upcoming segment of his tv show HouseSmarts. Lou was a great guy, who at first, couldn’t talk about chickens without breaking up in laughter. After a while he seemed to be getting interested in chicken keeping and I could just see him visualizing the amazing coop he could build.

My girls performed well and I don’t think I was too “crazy chicken lady”, so I’m looking forward to seeing the segment. It should air on NBC on October 23rd, but I was told to check my local listings to see exactly when.

A little while later a photographer named Joshua Kristal came by to photograph my hens. This will go with an article being written for a new online magazine about South Brooklyn. I think it will be in their inaugural issue, but don’t have a date when that will come out yet.

Anyhow, my hens are so full of themselves with all the attention they got. I’m ready for them to start demanding lattes and bigger dressing rooms.

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