anyone want a free chicken?

Well it's the second time in two weeks that I'm writing a post that centers around the bathroom habits of animals.  Rest assured that no one is more disturbed by this turn of events than I am.  First it was Pearl, and now, chickens.

Let me back up.  A few weeks ago, we got four new baby chicks.  They were a day old when we got them and as adorable and tiny and cuddly as anything can possibly be.  We played with them for a while, and then got them all settled into their luxury living quarters, aka a big Rubbermaid container in our garage.  We plugged in their heat lamp to keep them at a balmy 95 degrees, and shut the door.  

 I had off the next day so I stayed up a little bit later than usual, and before I headed up to bed at about 11:30, I peeked into the garage to check on the chicks, only to see that their heat lamp had burned out and they were all piled on top of one another, shivering their little tail feathers off.  

Naturally, I did what any farmer does in this situation.  I went upstairs and woke Matt up, and he drove his F-150 to the 24 hour Walmart just like our forefathers.

In the meantime, I brought the Rubbermaid into the family room.  I parked it next to a space heater and filled a container with hot water so they could gather around it.  

While the chicks and I had our midnight bonding time, I decided to name them Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy after the Little Women, four of my other favorite chicks.

Eventually Matt came home with a new heat lamp and we turned their Rubbermaid into a sauna once again, but we did decide to leave them in the family room because it's still cold at night here and the garage gets very chilly.  

And now two weeks later, the chickens still live in our family room.  They are entertaining to watch, and are living up to their names.  Meg is firm but calm.  Jo is wild and slightly aggressive.  Beth hangs back and observes.  Amy likes to be the center of attention and I even caught her the other night sleeping with a clothespin on her beak to make it extra pointy.

Just kidding about that last part.

Anyway, I left the house around 8:30 yesterday for some meetings.  I got home at about 2:30, and went straight upstairs to my office to finish a few things.  I shut 'er down around 4:30, and headed outside to bring in the trashcans since it was trash day.  I went downstairs so I could go out through the garage door, and it was the first time I'd gone downstairs, and therefore the first time I'd seen the chicks, all day.

And do you know what greeted me when I walked down the steps?

A sight I won't soon forget.

Jo was sitting OUTSIDE OF THE CONTAINER.  And there was chicken poop ALL OVER THE RUG.

That's a guilty looking chicken if I ever saw one.

You can see that we did have chicken wire over the top of the container, but Jo had managed to make her great escape and left of her day of adventure all over our family room rug.  

TYPICAL JO.

Do you know how many times baby chicks poop every day?  I can tell you, it's A LOT.  

I wanted to cry.  And I'll be honest, for a few seconds I actually thought about turning around and going upstairs and pretending like I didn't see a thing, and let Farmer Matt discover the situation for himself when he got home. 

But I ended up putting Jo back in the box, and then I sprayed the whole carpet with a liberal dose of carpet cleaner, donned some gloves, and scrubbed my heart and my frustrations out.

I got it cleaned up, but I have the day off tomorrow so I am going to do another round of scrubbing just for peace of mind.  

I'm trying to find the silver lining here, and I will say that after a long winter of mud and snow and a house renovation, the rug needed a deep cleaning anyway.  

And I need chocolate.