By Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher
Having to put out a magazine every month really interferes with your chicken-blogging.
In the midst of a whirlwind of deadlines finishing up the July issue, we were also dealing with change after change in the coop.
First: A building boom (left).
Our ever-resourceful building-maintenance staff members Tony Soria and Dan Strack built this masterful piece of chicken architecture to help our henpecked hen find some peace.The Honeydome, I like to call it.
(I know it’s not a dome. But I like saying that. You should try it: Honeydome. Rolls off the tongue.)
At first, they built just a low fence separating it from the rest of the coop. We figured that poor Honey was so terrorized by the rest of her flock that she would want to stay in her little safe sanctuary.
We were wrong.
I mean, we kind of forgot that chickens can fly.
In our defense, they are not good flyers. And how could we have predicted that Honey would develop a crazy form of chicken Stockholm syndrome, in love with her oppressors?
See, every time we put her in the perfectly safe (and downright posh) Honeydome, she would immediately fly out, only to be pecked by the other chickens. And go back to being broody in the nest box.
Shortly after this photo was taken, Dan and Tony amended their design to add ceiling-high chicken wire to prevent flying the coop. Then, she would pathetically press her little golden body against the chicken wire. And that evil Ruby would peck her comb through the fence.
Alas.
Tomorrow: The Honeydome was not built in vain! A huge surprise. Really, you should tune in tomorrow too.
