No, Steph, you may not come in. I have to admit that it's endearing the way Stephanie follows me around. Undoubtedly, it's because she expects to get some nums out of the deal, but I like to think it's at least partly because she likes me. In whatever way chickens like things. However that is. She would surely follow me into the house if I let her.
She came in once, by accident, when I let the storm door swing shut and it got caught up on something. I just happened to look back and there she was, waddling into the house. Edison was just around the corner. Each was oblivious to the other. It could have been disastrous, but I shooed her out before introductions occurred.
She often ends up on the back porch or by the back door. I think when the chickens are near the back porch/door, they can hear when someone's in the kitchen or by the back door, even when the door and windows are closed. They're always alert to a potential snack.
Stephanie likes to hang out on top of the bin we use for recycling bottles and cans.
She can look through the back door into the kitchen and see what's going on. Sometimes Ed jumps up on a shelf so he can look out the back door. And they look at each other.
Most of the yard has a fence around it now, but the driveway doesn't because that would be awkward. We use baby fencing (which we got from Stephanie, after whom the chicken was named) to block off the driveway. The girls could get over it, but they've only done so when sufficiently motivated. They could fly over it if they get up enough speed, but they don't seem interested most of the time. It's just a driveway and there's nothing for them to eat there so it's usually of no interest to them.
Once Stephanie ended up on our neighbor's front porch; I think she may have flown over the baby fence from this perch here. Now we put the baby fence further away.
The second time they got out was just the other day. I left to borrow the same neighbor's dog to go for a walk. The girls saw me leave by the gate. When I got outside with the dog on his lead, Stephanie and (I think) Michelle had followed me and were walking around the neighbor's front yard. There's a small gap where the fence hits a curb that's a few inches wide. I think they may have squoze through there, although they may have flown over.
That was simply too exciting for Duke the dog as well as the chickens. They weren't all excited for the same reason. I'm pretty sure Duke wanted to catch and eat the chickens. The chickens just wanted to get away. They hurried to the fence and, of course, couldn't remember how they got by it in the first place, so I tied the barking Duke up to the lamp post and shifted the gate so the girls could go back into the yard.
Downside: the girls were scared. Upside: They seemed to recover pretty quickly. Also, I hope it discourages them from going by the gate again.
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