Continued from Facebook…

Our journey with Tommy and Lady left us hopeful for their future, but waiting impatiently for Lady to make a choice in regards to Tommy. Obviously, it seemed Tommy was interested in wooing Lady. Lady seemed either oblivious or entirely not bothered by his advances. She was unsure of her new life at this new farm filled with smaller feathered beings and the strange four legged beasts. The coop door was mighty small and the roosts not near high enough.

Finding her place among the chickens, ducks, sheep, calves, and the lone dog was not going to be easy. Her flock was odd to say the least and her potential mate, meh, he didn’t say the right things. For weeks, she fought the new routines, running laps around the coop at dusk, and generally giving me the stink eye (that may just be the only look she has, honestly). She didn’t want to be in the coop at night. She didn’t want to come out in the morning. Nothing was to her liking here.

Slowly, Lady began to acquiesce and ceased fighting the nightly routine. She went to bed with little encouragement, following her flock mates inside. Soon, things began to change. Tommy stopped chasing. Lady stopped fleeing. It seemed they were at least coexisting. Progress. Things had settled into what looked like normalcy. I could finally put the feathered creatures to bed with ease, aside from the few chickens who had decided to shun the inner sanctum of the coop in favor of the open section, which provided little in the form of safety from the hungry beasts of night. Nightly, I toss them inside, but at least I could find Tommy and Lady finding spots on the roosts.

This was not to last, of course. One night, I had locked everyone safely inside the coop and made my way out of the pasture. Out of the corner of my eye, white in the grass. The color white always catches my eye. Most of my sheep are white, as are many of my fowl. In most cases, white is either currently attached to a living creature, or it was. I immediately went to investigate and, in the darkening light of dusk, who should I come upon but Lady. She was nestled into the thistles and grass, only her thin neck and head poking above the purple flower tops of the Canadian Thistle.

Of course, she was, at first, shocked to be found. She quickly turned to defense-mode and hissed her warning. Knowing this cat isn’t quick to use her claws, I hastily reached for her. Lady darted away and I found myself instantly distracted by what she had left behind. A clutch of eggs! Out in the open? I glanced back up at her as she stared at me warily. Again I looked at the eggs and then refocused my attention on the important matter at hand: Getting Lady into the coop.

The chase was on again. She did not want to leave her nest behind, nor was she interested in dealing with my grabby hands. This chase was short, thankfully. I opened the coop door and rounded her in after a few merry-(not so merry) go-round-the-coop. I carefully scooped up the six eggs, carrying them in my shirt as though in an apron and Abel and I made our way home to crawl into our own beds.

Tommy and Lady behaved for a while, but they decided to make this into a team effort…

Read what happens in the Tale of Two Turkeys in the next installment!