Bellbottoms are hip!

My bellbottoms are coming in, and I've been preening my pretty flight feathers. My rump feathers have been slowly coming in and I have been excitedly exploring my new home - twice bigger than my old one. I'm still in love with my mirror (because I'm so pretty), and life is good!

Mealies?!?!!!?!?! (ZOMG!)

The humans brought me a small tub of these squirmy things. I was terrified at first, because I'm quite certain everything is out to eat me. After getting used to it, I realized that some of the squirmy things weren't actually too scary. I couldn't approach them yet, you see, because I wasn't sure they wouldn't morph into chicken-killers the instant I let my guard down.
So I waited.

Eventually Mama caught on that I was afraid of the squirmies, and had no idea how to be a chicken. She made a noise ("Took took!") and banged the floor with her finger. Food?! It couldn't be.

I poddled over to where she was banging on the floor, and pecked at the squirmy thing. It was candy. I was a piggy... they didn't even knew what hit them. I was forced to take a break from the meal worm buffet, and when the tub of squirmies came back out I got so excited I flew/ran clear across the floor to get more.

Food coma. I has one.

The outside is terrifying D:

The outside, as you may or may not be aware, is large. And cold, at times. Cold and large, with a sky that stretches far and contains countless predatory things - like clouds. Have you ever truly examined a cloud? They are just sitting up there, waiting...waiting for a chicken to drop her guard long enough to become lunch. Monsters, but not the good kind, biding their time until unsuspecting babies are brave enough to venture out from under Mama's skirts and peck the grass.

We weren't very brave today. We didn't leave Mama's skirts. We did get convinced to explore by being picked up and put down, but it was too cold. Less than one minute and it was universally decided that the clouds were too intent on committing

murder and the temperature too nippy.

We'll try again. In the spring. Hopefully the clouds will be gone by then!

Camera shy? Not me!

After a few days to settle in and get comfortable in the temporary home I began expressing a lot of curiosity about my surroundings; a tissue paper box to play in like a cave, with a heat lamp for warmth, a stuffed toy bluejay for snuggling, and a parakeet toy shaped like a squid with long stringy tentacles I like to peck at. Oh, and my favorite? A mirror with a bar of beads in front of it I peck at and move side to side. I run over to be picked up now, which is a nice change from me peeping in a semi-alarmed way whenever the door to my space was opened (or shut!), and I'm eager to be petted now.

Also, all my posts will be written first-person now, because I'm a fabulous silkie star. It's all the fashion.

Welcome home, Laurel!

We'd talked long and hard about the pros and cons of bringing a cluck-cluck into our lives, and eventually decided that the fit would be right. The question then became from whom to buy the baby, what color we wanted, and what breed.

Lauren turned me on the idea of silkies, mostly with her general fawning over their virtues. Soft, small and fluffy - almost furred, rather than feathered, and with sweet dispositions and excited, friendly demeanors. Laurel would be a silkie, and named for the person that inspired the choice! We found a breeder on a website, and ended up deciding to go with his babies - would we pick black, or white? The drive was about an hour and a half, and I went into it thinking I'd choose black, but the little white poofball stole my heart.

And so it came to be that Laurel was a silkie, and Laurel was white. She snuggled the whole ride home, peeping curiously from the general safety and warmth of my hands.