Silkies are arguably the cutest and friendliest chickens around. Unlike most chickens, their feathers are so soft and fluffy that they resemble Muppets more than chickens. Throw in some extra toes, black skin, and electric blue earlobes and you’re starting to get the picture.
Thing is, all that floof attracts tons of dirt and worse. Worse meaning poop hanging off their backside in a most unattractive fashion. A good healthy diet helps keep pasty butt at bay, but every so often you gotta get in there and do the ugly side of animal husbandry. A nice soak in warm water really helps break that poop up as well as keep the chickens calm and cozy.
After a good soak and lather you have your self an ugly looking drowned rat kinda chicken. A soaked silkie means a cold silkie once the sun sets. Many can get sick this way, so it’s important to either do this in the morning so they have time to dry or give them a little spa treatment with a blow dryer. Just be careful they don’t get over-heated when doing so!
I wanted to share this little video with you all so you can see how much Piper adores the spa days here at the Mind Your Dirt Luxury Spa Treatment Super Center and Poof Emporium. So here it is…
I’ll bet you didn’t know that once Donald Trump is done after a busy day of being the nations Orange Hitler, he likes to come home and relax. Let his hair down if you will.
Orange Hitler and his escaping hair creature.
The problem is, once his hair is down, it leaps off his skull and meanders its way to my backyard. Once it’s here, I like to call it Piper the silkie hen. One of my prized chickens. And I feed her and love her more than any other chicken/douchebag hair piece I’ve ever known.
I try oh so hard to not get political on this gardening blog. Mostly because you didn’t come here to hear the rants that I typically reserve for the poor saps that are around me all day long. I try to keep Mind Your Dirt and James Gielow ever so slightly separated. Sometimes things slip through the cracks. Like today when I caught Piper taking the most adorable dirt bath ever. She was just happy as a pig in shit to be digging and scratching and slathering filth all up in her fuzzy britches. It’s what chickens do to get any mites or critters out of their feathers.
When Piper does it, she likes to make little purring sounds like Gizmo from the movie Gremlins. And then my heart turns to jelly. But today I could’t help but see her as a sentient Donald Trump Hair-Beast and I began giggling. And then crying. Both for slandering my innocent little cutie pie fuzzy butt, as well as the current state of the nation where we have a choice between Orange Hitler and Grandma Nixon for president. But as Jefferson said, “We are given the government that we deserve” and this current situation is a reflection on what “we the people” have allowed to happen.
So imagine my dismay when Trump’s hair visions began creeping into my head. I feel molested, pooped and demoralized. My only solution is to watch the above video over and over again until the evil vision leaves me be. I recommend you do the same. Just listen to that cute purring and cooing. UGH! My heart is jelly again.
Post Script:
I’m sorry that I have been less than present here on Mind Your Dirt the last few weeks. You see I was actually hospitalized from a dog bite two weekends ago. Nothing too major but my dominant hand has been out of commission and my dominant brain has been hopped up on goofballs for the pain. I’ll bring you a note from my doctor. Dr. Huy Ho. I shit thee not. My doctor is a song from a Disney cartoon. Jealous? He is the best doctor I’ve ever had by the by. I digress.
Sasha the mighty husky lab got into a fight with Noe the cow dog beast over the matter of ownership of a stuffed husky cuddle monster. I tried to intervene as I have health insurance and my dog does not. A matter of economics. Well, Noe wasn’t too keen on my getting in the middle and proceeded to sink her back teeth into and through my right ring finger. Fantastically powerful pain and suffering ensued and I’m still not able to do much with my right hand. No stitches were applied as the finger meat was far too tore up for anything to sew to anything else. Want to see photos? I didn’t think so.
I never lost my cool during the entire episode, however, and even spent time to comfort Noe and make sure that she and Sasha were wound free. They were thank goodness. I then played a game of Wits and Wagers with my house guests, built a roaring fire for the making of S’Mores and waited until all guests left. When I tried to go to bed I finally admitted that to fall asleep with the loss of so much blood and the presence of so much pain would be extremely stupid. A sentiment my wise girlfriend and her sister echoed hours before. So what, I’m a stupid man. Big deal.
At 11:30 p.m. Nury and I visited the hospital for a lovely six and a half hour visit of waiting, poking and scrubbing. Good times!! Oh yes, and a healthy $100 copay. Here’s me in the throws of pain and suffering. Feel free to have this enlarged and framed with a caption underneath reading “Lesser Mustachioed Douchbag”.
Regardless, I have a slew of unwritten posts up inside my drug-addled melon, I just need to get them all down as well as take the subsequent associated photographs to bring you added visual delights. Please bear with my recovery and endeavor to do your best to not be around me for the next full moon! I get…bitey.
Most mornings you’ll find me sleepy-eyed and confused wandering around my backyard in a robe. It’s like a scene out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest sans medication time and a mean nurse Ratchet (my all time favorite book by the way, cheers Ken Kesey and all your Merry Pranksters).
My dog (and possibly my neighbors) observe this slow-moving and butt scratching beast with an apprehension usually reserved for a schizophrenic having a heated debate with a rusty tin can and a bit of used dental floss.
It takes a good hour before I “come alive” and when I do, I’m just grateful that I’m not standing on the roof of the house naked. Not a morning person.
Why all this colorful explanation regarding my morning routines? Because the other morning I witnessed something that instantly shook me out of my zombie mode just by the shear uncanniness of it. My Easter egger hen, Mia, had somehow laid a magical mini egg! “What the shit?” said I. “What manner of sorcery is this?”.
FREAK!It won’t even fit on my super sweet egg skelter device 🙁
In order to facilitate yet another late day to work, I quickly went to the Interwebs to get to the bottom of this mystery. I am often easily distracted. Oh, what’s that?…
The good (and boring) news is that it’s a completely normal biological process that a chicken goes through when there’s some foreign material or reproductive tissue in the hens oviduct that triggers the formation of an egg around the material. The chicken body treats it like a yolk and it goes on down the production line like there’s no problem at all. the lack of a yolk produces a much smaller egg that usually has a much thicker shell. Yawn.
So that’s the science behind this mystery. Also, a chicken vagina has finally graced the electric pages of Mind Your Dirt. Huzzah!
But when it comes to The Interwebs, one can never simply stop along the road of research just because an answer has been found. A good scientist tests and re-tests his/her hypothesis. With good ol’ fashioned folklore and tales of witchcraft!
In ancient folklore, an egg of this nature was called a Cock Egg. It was called such because it was believed to be laid by a rooster. A matter of great spiritual concern, especially if you brought it into the house. Which I had promptly done before doing my scientific research. If you do that, then you will suffer from bad luck, illness or much much worse!
I’m not too worried because they were highly valued by your local sorcerer for their use in magic spells and potions! I’ve always considered myself a modern sorcerer so maybe it’s not all bad that I brought it inside.
However, there is another huge risk, according to legend. If a serpent or toad or witch breaks in and tries to incubate the egg (Which would be worth seeing, so I’ve been leaving the back door open all night), then the egg would either hatch into a Cockatrice…
My regular readers know all about my constant Basilisk problems!! They really tear up my garden and constantly avoid my monster/demon traps! Really cuts into my trapping success ratio.
According to (my made up) legend, only a power weasel wearing a tutu made of juniper shrubs soaked in hobo tears has the power to ward off the evil Basilisk and Cockatrice! But none of my weasels will wear the silly things! Willful little beasts!
The timeless battle between fancy tutu weasel and dragon chicken
In the Middle Ages, what unexplained folklore would be complete without the aid of Satan himself. Old Scratch doesn’t just mess with people, but animals as well. A Cock Egg was a clear sign that The Fallen One has been snooping around the hen house.
Get this, in 1474 in Basel, Switzerland, a rooster went to trial for allegedly laying a Cock Egg. He couldn’t get decent representation and was found guilty of Satanic witchcraft and burned at the stake. Seriously. This happened.
“…the execution took place with as great a solemnity as would have be observed in consigning a heretic to the flames, and was witnessed by an immense crowd of townsmen and peasants.”
American author and educator, E.V. Walter in his essay – Nature On Trial – The Case Of A Rooster That Laid An Egg
Oh what a crazy bunch we humans are! But maybe this is where fried chicken comes from?!
Later in the Middle Ages the term Witch Egg emerges and much later in the Victorian Era, Fairy Egg. There are a few places in Scotland and parts of Europe that have used the term Wind Egg. Perhaps because a yolk-less egg lacks substance. And lastly, leave it to we Americans to coin the term, ahem…Fart Egg. Stay classy America!
I will keep you posted on any evil hatchings or demonic possessions as they happen in real time via my YouTube channel. If I’m able to that is. If I begin writing blog posts like the following…
“We are Legion and We love organic produce…”
…call an old priest and a young priest on my behalf.
Until then be safe and always know where to find your local sorcerer!!
