Today is not a fun day to be a chicken. 
It’s been a crazy week, yesterday thunder and lightning for hours, leaves flying around, acorns pinging around like little gunshots, now it’s all cold and everything is wet, the bugs are burrowing deep into the ground and the tree bark and the greens are tough and yucky. The girls wouldn’t move out from under the deck.
Every leaf that falls makes them jump because everything coming out of the sky could be a hawk or owl or a cat or dog or fox pouncing. Very scary, just not a safe feeling. All that wind blowing and swishing the trees makes it harder to listen for danger and alerts, too.
I put my jacket on and walked with the hens up to their favorite hidey spot in a little bit of woods running along the side of the house that projects out to the front yard like a mini grove. You can sort of see them hiding in a tangle of bush branches.
Different angle so I can see them better. That brown one is Nadia, and she hasn’t been feeling well. She wants to sit on the roost or in a nest all day, so the others sit with her because they’re worried about her, especially since they just lost T’Pol last week. Nadia mostly just stands there because she doesn’t feel like looking for worms under the wet leaves, but she came up here with them because she didn’t want to be left behind.
Mary Margaret and Myka take turns keeping an eye out while they scratch, and they make sure Nadia stays close by. I think she’s feeling her age. The white hens are a little more vigorous and one still lays every day, but they’re slowing down a little bit, too.
They’ll be glad to go in early to a special snack and go snuggle up on the roost again for a nap.
Duck Lords of the Sith 