I generally do not write about animals, but we have 30 pigeons and 3 young chickens.  We used to have one older hen but she was creating a ruckus every day in the chicken yard.  Before my youngest son finished the totally enclosed chicken yard, I had to go and let the chickens out every morning and lock them up at night to protect them from the critters.  Rhoda, the remaining chicken of our small flock of two has never been a friendly chicken. More like a big grump.  When my husband added 3 young chickens to the yard, she got her beak out of joint and made their lives miserable. Before I could get out there (at the crack of dawn, mind you) to open the chicken house, there was a regular donnybrook going on. Lots of squawking and peeping.  How far could they get away in a remodeled doghouse?  I kept threatening chicken frickasee, but that didn’t phase Rhoda.  I finally gave her to the gardner to add to his small flock.  He seemed to think Rhoda needed a rooster.  Now that’s a thought.  Hopefully, in her new quarters she will be less grumpy and see what it is like to be at the bottom of the pecking order.  We women are nurturers. Whether it’s a human baby or baby chickens.  I wanted to protect my little chickadees from their wicked stepmother.  My husband, being the practical left-brained man he is, murmured, “The chickens are fine!” He has a hearing loss and didn’t have to wake up to the melee in the chickenhouse every morning. The first morning I scattered their seed after Rhoda left, the little chickens attacked the food like starving children. Rhoda always hogged the food.  She’d run back and forth between the two piles of food squawking and the little chickens would run away. Feeling pleased with myself for solving the chicken problem, I glanced at the pigeon coop. Now if I could just do something with the pigeons……