Comes the time, comes the word.

The word is "pwned," or "pwnd." According to Urban Dictionary, it "basically means...to be dominated by an opponent or situation, especially by some god-like or computer-like force." It is a voguish, Internet-based word, and lacks vowels to an unpronounceable extent. All of which council against its usage in general writing.

But comes the time, comes the word. I could write that, yesterday, Molson was bested by an opponent or situation beyond his comprehension. But the most elegant way to express yesterday's events? Molson got PWNED.

Molson loves to do his egg eating trick--you know, the one where he eats an egg. He'd do it all day long if we let him. So we are careful never to leave him alone in a room with eggs.

He, in turn, waits patiently to be left alone in a room with eggs. He knows it's going to happen sooner or later. And he's picky about his opportunities--he doesn't risk egg theft when we might hear him standing up on the counter, or if we might come back before he is through. But yesterday morning, when Amy got in the shower, Molson knew his time had come.

There was an egg in a plastic produce bag on the counter. Molson took down the bag, and carefully removed the egg without damaging the bag. Then he went to bask in front of the wood stove with his ill-gotten treasure. Which is where Amy found him, sulky and confused, twenty minutes later. He had been working hard on this:

(remember these?)

PWNED!

PS: Come to think of it, that wooden egg fooled three completely different species yesterday. The chickens were fooled by it and laid eggs around it; the human egg collector was fooled by it and collected it with the real eggs, and then Molson was fooled so hard he was epically pwned. Of all domestic species, only the cat escaped being tricked by that egg... or, if it did fool him, he'll never tell.

Wait, is a rooster a chicken?

Today on How Do Chickens Work: one of the most commonly-asked chicken questions, according to Amy.

I was puzzled when Amy reported that people asked her this question, and averred that I had never heard it, not even once. The next day, I was asked it, too.



Q: Can you eat roosters?

A: ...Yes.

Where do chickens come from?

Today on How Do Chickens Work: Where do chickens come from?

Don't worry, this isn't The Talk. (You know, the one about the birds and the... birds.) No, this just tells you two specific locations from which baby chickens can be obtained:

(1) The Post Office. These chickens are boxed up and mailed out from a hatchery the day they are born. They travel along in a Post Office truck, and the next morning, you wait anxiously for the Post Office's 5:30 a.m. notification that your chicks have arrived. When they call, you jam on your shoes and drive happily to the Post Office, bringing your towel like you learned from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*.

You go behind the scenes at the pre-dawn Post Office, to an area filled with intriguing stacks of boxes and obscure machines and a desk with somebody's coffee and donut crumbs on a napkin. Your box of chickens is peeping audibly. You wrap the box up in your towel, so cold air doesn't get in the vent holes between P.O. and car, and you drive your chickens home.Inside the box, cuteness reaches dangerous levels as the fluffy chicks snuggle each other for warmth.


(2) From beneath a hen. When a hen sits crankily on her nest all day and bites you when you disturb her, she is broody. Broody hens lose all the feathers on their breasts and stomachs, so their warm and kind of sweaty-feeling skin is in direct contact with the eggs. It's like a sauna under there, or an armpit. The broody hen does not know whether the eggs she's sitting on are fertilized or not, and she doesn't care. She just feels driven to assemble a clutch of round things, and be left alone to sit on them. Just about the time she's sick of sitting on round things, if she's lucky, tiny little visitors appear beneath her. And she happily moves on to Mother Hen Mode.

Craziest part of that scenario? The Mother Hen Mothership. It's awesome!


* if you are a nerd

I POOP ON YOU

The most dangerous angle from which to appreciate chickens:

from directly below.

DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS CAMERA ANGLE AT HOME, OR SITUATE YOURSELF THUSLY.

Things might go along smoothly for a couple years. You and the chickens might run a nice, clean little operation for quite some time. But sooner or later, if you spend time beneath the roosts... chickens gonna getcha.