She Never Saw it Coming

Saturday morning Tricia, Russ, and I were up at the working on a project with some other members of the church family.  We were enjoying ourselves, and it was nice, once again, to get out and be social.  Russ received a telephone call from Benjamin, who was at home.  I only heard one half of the conversation, but it didn't sound good.  Russ said, as he closed the call, "Okay, I'll tell 'em."

He hung up and told us that Benjamin went outside to check on the cows as they were mowing the grass in the front yard and saw an act of violence taking place in the pasture and that we needed to get home quick.  When we arrived, we found that the perpetrator was under house arrest.  The suspect was Belle.  She is being held in the garage on a cable tie-out until her arraignment.  She crawled under the car in embarrassment for her crime and is looking mighty guilty, if you ask me. 

After taking a statement from Benjamin, who witnessed the entire episode, he stated that he walked out to see Belle catching a Barred Rock hen in the pasture and tossing it into the air.  When Benjamin ran out to the pasture, the hen was in Belle's mouth and was barely alive.  We put her temporarily in a wagon full of hay, hoping she will be able to heal from this ordeal, but the prognosis wasn't good.

In looking over the hen closely, she was certainly traumatized.  She was bleeding from the leg and was shaking and unsteady on her feet.  I really don't know if she'll make it.  After looking closer, I noticed that she was our hen with only one eye.  We found, and reported on, "Old Cyclops" many years ago in THIS POST FROM MAY 2016..  Old Cyclops never saw it coming.  Belle probably came up on her on her blind spot.

Belle, while she is a livestock guardian dog, is just a puppy.  She likes to play with the chickens and goats and cows.  She didn't intend to kill the hen - she just played too rough.  We'll have to be more careful and not leave her unattended with the chickens until she grows up.

Old Cyclops

I regret to inform you that Old Cyclops passed away.  She'll now be composted and have the opportunity to grow some nice vegetables for us in the garden.  As far as Belle, she is on parole now and will have to visit with her probation officer frequently.  We think we can rehabilitate her.  She needs to learn that she must guard the chickens and protect them from danger - not kill them!

Cyclops Chicken

In a very popular (around here) song entitled “Louisiana Saturday Night” by country singer Mel McDaniel, a portion of the lyrics go like this:

Waiting in the front yard sitting on a log,
A single shot rifle and a one eyed dog.
Yonder come my kinfolk, in the moonlight
Louisiana Saturday night!

Well, you get down the fiddle and you get down the bow
Kick off your shoes and you throw 'em on the floor
Dance in the kitchen 'til the morning light,
Louisiana Saturday night!

Well, each of our dogs are blessed with two eyes, but Benjamin was very observant the other day and brought something to my attention that I had never seen before – one of our hens only has one eye!  I have no idea how he spotted that among all the other birds, but I picked up the hen and took a closer look.  If you observe the right side of her head, all appears normal.  She is alert and everything appears to be just like a chicken’s head is supposed to look.

But when you look at the other side of her head, that’s where things get interesting.  She doesn’t have a left eye!  Let me correct that.  She may have an eye, but the red “comb” material has completely grown over it.  I took my fingers and tried to pry her left eye open, but it was useless.  It was sealed shut.

One-eyed hen

If you look at the left side of her head, there appears to be a dent in her head and comb where there should just be feathers.  This made me wonder whether or not she was injured when younger and maybe the comb is like scar tissue?  Or maybe this is just some sort of a birth defect?  I’m not sure.  I’m not a veterinarian. 

On a positive note, it doesn’t seem to bother her any.  She’s getting around the pasture just fine and has apparently learned how to adapt to having only one eye.  I sat her back down and she took off running across the pasture, oblivious to her handicap.

I considered for a split second whether I should go get a sharp knife and try to carefully open up the closed eye in an attempt to restore her vision on the left side, but quickly determined that Ol’ Cyclops, is fine just the way she is.  Maybe she just needs an eye patch so she can get in touch with her inner pirate.

And that reminds me of a joke I heard:

One time there was a pirate that had a parrot.  The parrot had a really foul mouth, swearing all the time.  The pirate was a gentle and kind buccaneer who didn’t curse at all and his parrot was offending his sensibilities.  One day the parrot cursed so much that the pirate reached his breaking point.  He grabbed the parrot, shook him and said, “Enough!”  The parrot got so mad after the pirate’s uncharacteristic outburst that he just swore more.  This made the pirate really angry and he threw the parrot in the deep freeze and sat on the lid while he cooled down.  The pirate heard a lot of thrashing around within the freezer, but after a few minutes, it got real quiet.  He began to feel bad for the parrot and opened the freezer door.  The contrite parrot humbly climbed up on the pirate’s shoulder, stretched out his frozen wings and said, “I’m really sorry for my language.  I promise I won’t swear anymore.”  The pirate was impressed by the parrot’s repentance and wondered what caused this conversion.  Then the parrot remarked, “By the way, what did the chicken do?”