Chicken Adventurers!

The kids let the chickens out of their coop yesterday before they went to school.  A little later, I needed to put them back in, since some men were coming to work on our house.  I usually don't let them out if I know that they will need to go back in soon, since it is hard to get them all back into the coop durning the day.  At night, they go in on their own and I just have to shut the door behind them.  

But that was not how it worked today.  

I got the left overs from breakfast to try and entice them into the coop.  I called to them and they usually all come running.  This time there were only 4.   I was pretty sure Ginger was in the nest box, so where was Bunny?  

I could hear the little noises that she makes and started looking around.  She was on the other side of our 6 foot fence. 

(These pictures of Bunny aren't actually outside the fence or taken today.  They are just some I had of Bunny.)

I went out and sure enough, there she was walking around under the brush.  It took us a good 15 minutes to get her back inside the fence.  I would climb around under the brush and blackberries to  herd her to the gate and then she would dart the other way.  AAAAAAA!  Back again, under the bushes.  I finally got Harvey to hold the gate open and standing back far enough not to block her way in and Julius to stand, blocking her avenue of escape, so the easy path was the one I wanted her to take, and she went through the gate.  

Then she proceeded to jump up on the compost bin, to the fence and into the tree above my head.  What is she doing up there?  When she jumped back down to the fence, I took a long stick and prodded her down the rest of the way.  We finally got all the chickens in their coop.  

I check the nest box, just to make sure Ginger was there, and she wasn't.  Where was she?  I look all through the coop, no Ginger.  I called for her and looked all over the yard.  No Ginger.  I started to look in the neighbors yard.  No Ginger.  Then for some reason I looked up.  There she was high in the tree (the same one Bunny had jumped in).  

What is she doing up there?!  I couldn't reach her, not even with a long stick.  I called to her, trying to get her down, she just looked around her and hopped to a higher branch, and then another one!  That chicken thinks she is a tree bird!  She'd mosey down the branch, looking all around.  Stop and sit there for a few minutes.  Walk back to the trunk.  Look around hop to a branch above her, walk down that one.  

After a while she looked like she wasn't sure how she was going to get down.  Then she hopped to a lower branch, oh good.  A crow perched on a branch near her and watched her for a while.  

Finally, she hopped down another branch, then walked to the end one.  She sat there swaying with the weight of her on the thin branch.  Looking around.  I could tell she was thinking of jumping.  And she did.  She came down about 25-30 feet,  flapping her wings for a soft landing.

Then I chased her around until I caught her and could put her in the coop.

Here are my adventurous chickens, back in their coop.  

I think that some girls are going to get their wings clipped.