I have neighbors with people skills

Yesterday in the back yard as I was ignoring somebody who was knocking on my front door, the person refused to be ignored and came around to the back to peer over the fence into the backyard. Unfortunately she was tall as well as friendly. This points up another problem with the fence.

The first problem with the fence* is that the smaller cat (now named 5spot) easily climbs up it and jumps down from its top horizontal 2x4 support board into the chicken yard, to chase the chickens around while they squawk BOK BOK HELP HELP BOK HEEEEELP. That top support board is like a prison yard catwalk looking down on succulent chicken prisoners and it only took 5spot a few weeks to figure out he was the mean prison guard. Yesterday I was in the back yard rigging up a 2nd fence of chicken wire inside the other board fence far enough in to keep 5spot from leaping over and in from the board fence.

I was also adding a rain-and-heat-barrier door to the new chicken coop (made of an old drum shaped coffee table painted gray blue, with a patio table glass top for the circular roof of it YEAH). The rain and heat barrier door is just strips of plastic dangling down in front of the wooden coop doors. The wooden coop doors are shut at night but need to be open during the day for the chickens go in and out and make a lot of noise and lay eggs in their poopy straw so if the eggs aren’t collected constantly, they get slightly poop smeared, and I tell people not to wash them off. “An egg has a protective coating that keeps it fresh longer if you don’t wash it. Wait: how long will you be keeping the chickenpoop smeared eggs stored in your fridge before you bake something?” So far the 2 new chickens don’t seem to mind that cold air and rain can blow in the open doors during the day, but it is supposed to snow this weekend.


You know the strips of plastic or rubber that old grocery store coolers have dangling down as a temperature barrier? If those work for keeping dead chickens cold in the grocery store cooler, and keeping the warm dry grocery store air out, then shouldn’t the dangling plastic strips I made help keep dry warm air (heated by a lamp in the new blue drum coop) inside the coop, and cold wet fresh nature air out of the coop, for warm live chickens?

The new chickens are Thing1 and Thing2. They are small and stripey.

Summarizing so far: I got 2 more chickens. I made them a coop. The 2 old chickens are still in the old coop. The new coop is a work in progress. The littler cat is bugging all the chickens, so I am figuring out cat fencing, against him. A neighbor is bugging me over the other fence who is too tall to ignore.

The neighbor’s name is Nancy and she came over to introduce herself because she heard I had chickens, when all 4 of mine went over the board fence last week and went up the street 2 houses where 2 other neighbors (Holly and somebody) trapped them and then put notes on the doors of everybody on the block saying “ARE YOUR CHICKENS MISSING? We have them!” and giving their phone number. Nancy’s husband had said to her when she got home from work that day “Your chickens got out.” She went and checked, and said “No they didn’t.” (I got home and checked and said about mine “Yes they did,” and called the number. During that conversation I said “How do you have my chickens?” and they said “They just showed up.” “How did they show up?” I was curious if they were going through the back yards or were out in the street or what, but the neighbor said “Walking.” “How did you know they were mine?” They said “We didn’t. We put a note on every door on the block.” A little thought balloon over that neighbor said “we didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition” and “are you insinuating that your chickens can drive?”) But then Nancy knew somebody else had chickens, and came over to talk chickens with me.

She is nice. She only got her chickens this summer, so was acting like I was ahead of her and knowledgable. Her chickens stopped laying about a month ago. I asked if she has a light in their coop at night. She said no, she had heard that would work, but … er… she was trying to figure out if that was being mean to them. “Yours don’t mind having a light on all night?” I said no, or actually how would I know? Other than the one jailbreak that she had read about in the leaflet in her door, my chickens gave no signs of being unhappy. Nancy said she had just fixed up a reptile light (heat but no light) in her coop. It sounded like she would now think about a regular light to start her chickens laying again.

After that we talked about clipping chicken toenails (maybe we should do it but so far we did NOT. PLEASE.), chicken interestingness (yes they are) and agreed we might be chicken minders for each other when the other one of us went out of town overnight. I apologized for my outfit, which was muddy with paint stains underneath, and the current giant yard shoes on the very bottom.

Nancy said that her husband said, about her chickens, “I am behind you one percent!” This got confusing; I thought she was telling me that her husband was behind me one percent. I even said “Your husband is behind ME one percent?” and she said no he was behind her, Nancy, and her chickens one percent. She probably went back home and told her husband that I was nice, but sort of stupid and dressed like a slob and that she had been right to buy her coop readymade instead of cobble it together out of old furniture, bungee cords, and plastic hula skirts. She told me to drop by and look at her chickens and coop anytime, then she left and I got back to work.

When I go view her chickens and coop I can get it straightened out what percent her husband is behind me. My guess: one quarter of a percent.


*the first problem with the fence is actually that parts of it are rotting and leaning. 5spot is #2. Tall neighbors being able to be friendly above it is the 3rd problem. We apologize for the mathematical error.