Fair Oaks' Notorious Hen Fighting Ring

This morning I had a frightful moment when I realized 50% of my flock (of 2) was not out roaming. With much trepidation I looked in the laying box, and there was Adele, sitting on a pair of newly laid eggs. Aha! Adele had gone broody. I pulled her off the eggs and gave her some hugs.

"Who's my pretty little hen? Who's my fluffy, wuffy boo-boo hen!?"

Bingo! My cooing had the desired effect of shifting Adele out of broodiness and into indignation; "HOW DARE YOU HUG & SHOW ME AFFECTION!". Soon she was prancing around the garden, looking all insulted. She is so cute when she's angry.


Adele claims the 'goodie dish' without Babette's permission
Adele's next action however lead to the show stopper of the day. She headed towards the chicken goodie bowl. Now let me explain; my hens get treats via their goodie bowl. Yesterday, for example, I gave them a quarter of a ripe juicy Tuscan cantalope. The melon was sweet as honey and so flavorful I almost couldn't bring myself to give any of it up, but I put several cantelope cubes on the grass. To my aggravation, the girls looked at the melon, but made no attempt to try it out. Eat something not contained in their goodie bowl? As if!

Back to this morning, Adele approached the newly stocked goodie bowl (which included the previously ignored melon). Babette (my 'Special Ed' hen) flew into a chicken rage against Adele, clucking, pecking and feather's flying!

"That's MY goodie bowl!" declared the furious Babette.

I was standing right there, without a camera to catch the action of course. Had visions of myself at the head of an illegal hen fighting ring. "Put your money down! See Babette kick Adele's feathered arse!"

Did I mention, that for all the hen fight action, the only feathers that were flying were those of the attacker - Babette? Seems the girl's feathers are not exactly glued on too well.

Anyway, that was it, about 4 or 5 wing-flapping attacks against Adele, during which Adele was only mildly distracted. In the end Babette subsided her attacks and clucked angrily as Adele helping herself to the goodie dish, without or without Babette's permission.


Adele (top) looks around to reclaim her lost feathers
Interesting; at Colette's death last month, for want of a leader, Adele took to following Babette around. I reckon that lead Babette to thinking she was, pardon the pun, the Big Cock of the Walk, so much so that she tried to 'discipline' her so-called follower, Adele.

Uh... sorry Babette. Adele does follow you, but she doesn't recognize your exclusive ownership of the goodie bowl. Ah yes, life's tough when you're a Special Ed chicken.

Once Upon a River

I haven't done anything in such a long time, vultures were spotted, hoovering over my house. With that in mind, Mommy Nancy and I, made plans to spend yesterday, Sunday, doing something - anything that would get my pedal extremities to jiggling, or better yet, walking. After musing over options for the day, we settled on attending the Courtland Pear Festival (yee ha!) south a Sacramento a ways along the river delta.

So around 1:30 I turned up at Rick & Nancy's & the first order of the day was lunch, which Rick cooked up for us all - batter fried tilapia and pork tacos. *Yum* Honestly, the chatting and the food was so good that it was almost 4:30 by the time Nancy & I were out the door headed for the Fair. I was tickled Nancy drove, so I got to gawk out the window. The drive was lovely & unseasonably cool, on the highway that skirts the Sacramento River. It's another world down there on the Delta.


Driving along the Sacramento River

Hurrah, the Courtland Pear Fair!

Loads of elegant dining

And all you can drink!
Before long, Nancy was enjoying a raspberry pear smoothie and I was eating a forbidden fruit - an ice slushy, with loads of fruit syrups, none of which included Pear. Our primary goal had been to sample the Pear Pie, but you have to get to the fair a lot earlier in the day to enjoy that particular treat. Oh well, we settled on buying some yummy Pear Strudel. We sat enjoying our treats while a Mariachi band banged on in a nearby tent that must have been seating three hundred happy, pear munching fair visitors.


Insert Loud, Cheery, Horn Laiden Music HERE
By the time we finished our treats, the fair was closing down. We decided to continue south along the river, to see what we could see. One of the most frequent sights on the River are bridges, all of which can rise up when necessary for the passage of boats.


Approaching grand river crossing

Over the River & through the woods...
We stopped briefly at the Ryde Hotel - an elegant little Art Deco-ish spot along Sacto's Riviera. I think it would be an interesting place for friends to plan a get together.


Entrance at the Ryde Hotel -all the rage in 1925 and 2011
Next we headed south - only getting ourselves lost once along the way - to the tiny town of Isleton, once known as the “the Little Paris of the Delta". We decided to stroll up the main street, which to me looked lifted from some old Western movie; OK, maybe if you replaced the autos with cowponies.


Main Drag in Isleton
Along the main street were lots of very tiny plots of land overflowing with fruit trees and lush flowers. There even a little garden composed of a high wall of beaver cactus festooned with lush pink roses.


Rather Prickly Flower Arrangement
I was fascinated with the lots with fruit trees, probably planted some time in the early bits of the last century. We found Quince, plums, pears, flowing richly off tree branches. There were also flowers planted everywhere, giving bright punctuation to the street.


Juicy, Fat Peaches

Fuzzy Quince at the rear of one lot
Now, unfortunately, though I photographed loads of the fruit bearing trees, I didn't think to take pictures of the lots themselves; a shame, as they were so romantically reminiscent of small town America.

There was one spot with dozens and dozens of bright and tall sunflowers, some hoovering as high as 7 feet tall. As we admired the bright flowers, a man asked if we would like to take some to take with us? Would we, what a treat!


Towering Sunflowers

We ate peaches straight off the tree
We thanked our benefactor of the sunflowers and headed back to the car, for the drive home. Honestly, with those fresh & humongous sunflowers in hand, Nancy and I felt like we had a starring role in a rather small scale fairy tale. FLORUS HUMONGOUS!

Gig, the Second!

Hurrah! Got a call back to usher for yet another gig at the Music Circus, a Sunday night performance of one of my old favorites, Oliver!

I was not keen on some of the changes in this particular staging of Oliver!, including stupid details such as making Oliver the long lost grandson, instead of grand nephew of the kindly gentleman Mr. Brownlow. No clue why such a change was made, I mean, did they can't think the audience is too dense to absorb that Oliver was the son of the man's niece? Talk about watering down the soup! There were other things that rather drew me up short about this particular production, but I certainly have no complaints about the singing voices of its performers. Oh, and I totally loved the kid who played the Artful Dodger, he looked and somewhat sounded like a very young Nathan Lane - I think it's all in the eyebrows. I wonder if he is one of the local talents that I am told stared in this production?

Long story short, I'm thrilled to have been called in to usher and hope I can get another gig or two this season. Oh! The bummer is I will out of State for the play I have been hoping to see Miss Sigon. 'ow is that for a stale bit of toast mate?

The Dodger and Oliver belt out a tune
(photo courtesy someone else)