Unfree Enterprise

Enterprise has demonstrated yet again that wisdom is the better part of valor; she got herself trampled by the sheep in her exuberant love of chicken feed and her reckless unconcern for the hooves of the animals who tower so very many stories above her. Consequently, Enterprise is confined to quarters by herself until her busted foot mends.  Nothing is more irritating than the peening of an unhappy turkey, so it is lucky for me that the ducks and geese tend to hang around the range pen anyway, so the turkey can feel she is part of the flock.

I don’t think Enterprise will be very long getting better, but in the meanwhile, she missed the goxen’s first real juvenile delinquent activity. Last night, as my daughter so neatly summarized it, instead of the ducks and geese going to bed, they left. They slipped out through the rut under the barnyard gate and were discovered steaming down the driveway past the house, discoursing at length about their big adventure. My husband heard them and he and my daughter rounded them up and drove them back to the barn.

Part of me would love to have them out eating slugs in the flowerbeds, but not at dusk when the foxes were probably lining up in the hedgerow, drooling, waiting for them to come just one foot-slap closer before they pounced.