You Know What's Funny?

Watching a chicken eat a lemon.

Several friends are saving their table scrap fruits and veggies for the chickens.  I have found that they will eat cantaloupe down to a rind so thin you can almost see through it.  They will grab and entire tomato and run off with it like it's a Faberge egg.  I haven't figured out whether they like lemons or not, but after watching them today, I think not.

In the past, I usually just dump a bunch of stuff in at the same time, and let them pick out what they want.  I find some leftovers later on:  onion peels, the aforementioned cantaloupe rind, and citrus peels.  OK, so they aren't crazy about the peels, and that's ok.  I've seen them picking at the innards at times, so I knew they weren't absolutely averse to them.  But a friend of mind made two gallons of homemade lemonade for his granddaughter's birthday party.  (Now, that is love.  Or a total lie.  I'm still threatening to check his trash for the Corona bottles...)  I was the happy recipient of the leftover lemons, and you know what they say -- when life gives you lemons, give 'em to the chickens.

I tossed some into the pen with Shawna and Beyonce today.  They're the two bad girls, so they are out in the pen most of the day, to keep them from eating eggs.  We had just moved the coop the other day, and I cleaned it out of all of the leftover yucky stuff, so I wasn't jumping at the chance to add the peels and have to do the whole thing all over again.  I stayed around to watch, curious to see what the reaction to the lemons really was.  It was hilarious.

I threw a couple down, and they landed upside down.  The chickens sniffed them and then turned up their noses.  From past experience, I figured it was that they didn't want the peels, so I flipped them over so they could get to the guts, then added a couple more.  The girls wandered over, looked over the situation (probably sniffing it, but I couldn't tell), then gave a tentative peck.  Their heads immediately shuddered, then they backed up, put their heads to the ground and started wiping their face on the ground, first one side, then the other.  Vigorously.

Picture a chicken shuddering and madly wiping its face on the ground.  It's free entertainment that guarantees a laugh, trust me.  So yeah, I spend my time after work watching chickens doing stupid things, but trust me, it's a great bonding experience for me and the girls.

Even if Shawna is definitely headed for the chopper.  Beyonce?  I'm not quite sure yet.