The runners up, Jackie Legs and Knucklehead, while lovely, have minor issues that make them second string. Knucklehead is, well, dumb. And Jackie Legs hates buckets. He makes it extremely difficult to feed anyone without having grain spilled (in a big way). I guess this irrational hatred of buckets probably also makes him a little less intelligent than the average chicken, too.
Little Q is afraid of roosters, due to an incident with a formerly tame Ameraucana rooster that was the lone survivor of 2 dog attacks that wiped out his entire flock and his rooster BFF (Frank & Jesse James). The resultant PTSD altered his personality to the point that he has had to live a more solitary life for the past couple of years. He chased Little Q when he was younger and Little Q now cringes every time one of the roosters in general pop approaches him. Or looks at him. Or looks at anyone else.
Last Sunday, I decided that in order to be a good parent, I needed to try to help Little Q overcome his fear of roosters. Bad Vlad, typically predictable, seemed a good fit for the life lesson. "Watch this," I told Little Q, and I approached Vlad slowly. Normally, Vlad is docile enough that he will allow us to pick him up. What I didn't know was that Little Q had picked up one of Vlad's hens, and Vlad took exception to having his girls "messed with." He spurred me, hard and fast, both shocking me and creating an immediate stinging in my knee and lower leg.
Little Q dropped the Ameraucana hen, and Vlad went back to his normal, sweet self.
I realized last night that I probably made things worse with Little Q and his fear of roosters. I'm sure someday when he's farther from the ground, maybe roosters won't be so intimidating...in the meantime, I'm dealing with bizarre bruising and (more importantly) wounded pride. So much for teaching Q about overcoming fear.
We are going on four straight days of rain here in Utah. Yesterday, we had some snow in the lower elevations in addition to the mountains. Doesn't Mother Nature know that its May?!? Our turkeys have had to learn the back stroke to free range.
4 comments:
Oh poor sweet Q! Gus is afraid of spiders -unusually so, because he told us that one time he was in his car seat and a spider had dropped down on his lap and he couldn't get away from it!! Hopefully our boys will grown out of it?!
I know just where Q and Gus are coming from. I hate roaches. Once when I was in the fourth grade we moved to Hawaii and my parents rented a house and in the middle of the night my mom woke up screaming. It seems the roaches came out of the attic at night and ran everywhere, my mom sat up all night and my parents got their money back in the morning and we rented elsewhere. To this day I still scream at roaches and we have had a couple here in Florida. just a couple but that was enough. Gary now has roach motels in the kitchen cabinets just in case, because in the middle of the night if I go into the kitchen and happen to see one roach, even a tiny one, I scream with a blood curdling scream which wakes him up. Gary can't understand why I fear roaches so and not any other type of creature, snakes, spiders, vermin, no matter. I can't understand either, other than an early trauma retains itself as roach PTSD today.
I thought of you today, we took a day trip and stopped at a small nursery which had a lone rooster roaming around which the owner said I could have, he had previously given away three others just the day before. We can't have them here no place really for them, but I took his photo, will post him soon.
OUCH! Sneaky bast*rd!
BAD VLAD!!! And we have that rain too, DANG!
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