He was just too comfy on his favorite blankie to get up. And I didn’t mind the extra snuggle time since I am really missing George the goose.

Petunia is making sure that Benson & Reggie know SHE is in charge. They moved from my dining room to George’s outside pen yesterday, and they seem to be enjoying it. They can’t come out of those pens until they are cleared with a vet visit to ensure their parasites are gone. But they have a great nesting area, food, water and a play pool, so they are pretty psyched. They also love being near O’Malley and Petunia.

With Benson & Reggie outside, I decided to move Lester & Flapper to their old spot in the dining room. This way they can have a view of the yard on nice days, and I can have a nicer-smelling bedroom.

I also added a pan under their food and water dishes to hopefully keep the food slop from soiling the blankets and towels.

They each have food and water, a towel on top of a blanket on top of a foam piece, a mirror and a stuffy. Hopefully the new pan system will make it so I just have to change top towels daily, and not the entire blankets until the weekends.

I do miss George. He was a big personality and a great light to be around. It was very quiet in the yard today. No honking or hepping. But Reggie & Benson have added some fun to the yard, which will hopefully be nicer when it stops raining so much. And of course I love O’Malley and Petunia and the chickies. They are always entertaining and full of fun. Unfortunately the rain has been relentless for a few days, so everyone is getting cabin fever. And more is expected through the coming week. That’s spring in Seattle!

In other news, the office building post-it challenge continues.

The neighboring building replaced their PacMan and Tetris displays with Mario!

So on Friday I replaced our Space Invaders with this ostrich knight from the game Joust. We’re all waiting to see what the Dig Dug group does in response.

I’ll keep you post-it’d.

GOOSE UPDATE: Goose’s infection is not too bad! S/he will continue with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and have foot surgery on Tuesday. Won’t find out if goose is a boy or girl until then. Takes almost a week.

There are animal rights advocates, however, who worry about the long-term welfare of the feathered fowl. As the number of city dwellers with chickens has risen, so has the number of birds being abused and abandoned. And local animal control departments are finding stray chickens everywhere from neighborhood alleys to downtown parking ramps.” – MRP.org

Meet Mary Britton Clouse, the founder of Chicken Run Rescue.

This is a story well told by Minnesota Public Radio. In our short time of having chickens here at Flapper’s house, we have seen the many problems with urban chickens first hand. People who view chickens as food or egg machines often times view them as disposable, or balk at the idea of taking one to a veterinarian if she gets sick. It’s cheaper to just throw one away and get another one, right?

Chickens are not egg machines. Chickens are not stupid. Chickens need more space and care and consideration than most urban farmers realize (do not follow the guidelines for space requirements set up by factory farms!)

Chickens and ducks deserve to live free from suffering and cruelty, just as every other animal (including humans) does. Just because chickens are cheap and disposable does not make their suffering any less real.

Chickens are not a fad.

“Don’t worry, Chewy. We can still be friends.”

There’s a rescued hen at the vet’s office who might be a good fit as a new friend for Olivia. We’ll hear more tomorrow and see if it will work out. I think Olivia would like a new chicken friend… at least I hope so.

Stay tuned.

I have promised Flapper that there are no sharks in his pool. He always worries when I return home from the ocean.

Today my friend Paola and I took a tour of various chicken coops around Seattle. It was part of Seattle Tilth’s “City Chickens Tour 2010.” For someone like me, who rescues ducks, this is like Lollapalooza!

We saw some beautiful gardens and some super cute chicken coops. Since I rescue chickens and ducks, I knew we would also see a few problems that we always see. Just as I made many mistakes when I first had ducks, we saw many coops that were not predator proof. Many use chicken wire which raccoons can reach through. Some openly foraged during the day (like we used to) and admitted they had lost chickens or ducks to eagles or raccoons. Some probably have rat problems too, because they’re feeding in pens that aren’t rat-proof. Overall, all the people were very knowledgeable about sustainable farming, bees, chickens and such. They were a great group of people and it was a fun tour.

There is a vote coming up in Seattle to increase the legal number of fowl from 3 to 8. I am not sure I am in favor of the increase for several reasons. I guess the most obvious reason is the number of discarded roosters that end up in Seattle shelters. In recent years it has averaged about 20-30 roosters. I assume they’re from people who were sold “hens” but later found out that they were not all hens as they grew up. If the limit is increased nearly 3-fold, I’m concerned that the number of discarded roosters will increase as well. Hatching and shipping chickens are also both areas for concern with animal welfare.

It’s a complicated issue, and while it is great to see more people growing their own food and sustaining their own eating choices, I would just like to ensure that animals don’t needlessly suffer as a result. I am solidly pro-chicken, but not always pro-people I guess.

There was one coop that was spectacular. It was decorated on the inside with “great chickens through history” including Big Bird and the San Diego Chicken. It’s nice to see those hens have heroes to inspire them as they nest and lay eggs. Their pen was also fully predator-proof, they had the legal number of chickens allowed, and their pen was rat proof as well. I think that was my favorite of all.

Many of the kids sold lemonade on the tours, and for those who are wondering, the average price of a cup of lemonade these days goes for 50 cents to $1.00. One kid rose about the pack with his mango lemonade. Well done, kids.

All the best to all the chickens and ducks out there in Seattle. Stay safe, and many quacks from Flapper and family.

P.S. Actually, the kids were my favorite part of the tour. There are a lot of smart, involved kids who know all about plants and chickens and can’t wait to share what they know. I especially loved the kid who kept over-sharing information (that was making him mom cringe) about how their chickens go half-way down the block sometimes. Ha ha ha. “No they don’t stay in the yard. They go FAR away ALL the way down the block.”

Let’s recap the day.

I brought Flapper in the house at 6am because he was lethargic and sleeping too much. He didn’t eat great for two days. He went to the vet at 9am when they opened and spent the entire day there.

At 2pm I had a furnace repair man at my house because the furnace has been broken since last Tuesday. It is about 48 degrees inside my house.

I started making waffles for the ducks while the repairman was there, and let the ducks and chickens out of their aviary so they could hunt for bugs while I watched them through the kitchen window.

The repairman couldn’t find the right part to fix the furnace, and while we were talking, O’Malley bit Olivia on the butt. The repairman left and will come back on Wednesday when the part arrives to fix the furnace. I have to order the part online. The house is still cold.

I picked up Flapper right as the vet closed at 4pm, returning home to find I had left the waffle iron on and left waffle batter in it. The house thankfully did not burn down. In fact it smells nice like waffles.

I got Flapper settled into his pen and put everyone else away to take a thorough look at Olivia and make sure O’Malley didn’t hurt her. Well… O’Malley managed to rip a 2″ diameter hole in her butt, so we put her in the car and headed to the night time emergency vet for sutures. Her butt looked very sore. The vet gave her some pain medication. Olivia is now home from the emergency vet with sutures in her butt.

Olivia is not happy. I am tired. Flapper is sore. And O’Malley is grounded.

Let’s never speak of this day again.

Flapper came in the house at 6am to hang out on the bed with me. He slept with me on the bed while we waited for the vet’s office to open. He is lethargic and listless. He just stands wherever you put him. I can’t tell if he is in any pain or not at all. He does shake his tail now and then, but those chronic problems do cause him discomfort even when he’s not critically ill. He ate a few peas and drank some water and we rested for a few hours. As soon as the vet’s office opened we took him there.

I made Flapper a waffle square for the road and he perked up quite a bit to eat the bits of waffle. When we got to the vet they said “he looks pretty active,” so that is good. Hopefully he’ll stay strong today. He’ll get oxygen and an IV if he needs it, while they figure out what’s wrong (if they can).

Keep your fingers crossed for us. Or your webbed feet.

Friday morning he didn’t quite seem himself, so I gave him a bit of pain medication to see if that was what was bothering him, because of his chronic plumbing problems.

It perked him right up and when I left for work he was swimming in his pond. But through the day I could see him on Flapper cam from work, and he was hiding in the corner of the aviary. He doesn’t normally do that. That’s a very bad sign.

Tonight when I got home he didn’t quack or come to greet me. In fact he was barely moving. I put all the other ducks away and got his dinner ready and sat with him for a bit. He sat with me and seemed okay, but not quite all there. But when I put him down at his food dish, he ate like a champ and laid down for a nap. So I left him alone.

I could take him to the emergency vet tonight, and I called them, but all they can really do is stabilize him until he can go to his exotic vet in the morning. So I decided against that since he’s fairly stable. I asked if they could rush blood work and they said no, it had already been picked up for the night.

So it’s after midnight, and I just went out to check on Flapper. He was laying down but not asleep. He does not look well at all. I sat with him for awhile and then I brought him in and gave him a few peas while I prepared a shot of pain medicine for him.

Again, that seemed to perk him up, and he got into his baby pool when I took him back outside. His digestive system really seems to be hurting, and I don’t know if he can get better. He was able to poop on his own, but he’s shaking his tail like it hurts.

I have a theory, but it’s completely baseless at this point. I know scar tissue has built up so much that he can barely poop. I think scar tissue from his surgery in fall 2008 finally built up to where it is blocking his ureters… the ducts to his kidneys. This is just completely my theory, but I haven’t seen white urates in his poop like I should normally see from him in quite a few weeks. I also suspect this because of his fairly sudden arthritis. I think his arthritis could really be built-up crystals from his kidneys being unable to evacuate.

Again, it’s just a hunch. And I don’t even know if the science is right. But if his kidneys have not been working normally for some time and it has progressed so far that he is listless… I’m very concerned that he’s not going to get better. It happened so sudden today that I’m in shock, and I hope I’m wrong. I’ve been dreaming about him all week though, so on some level I know he’s not alright, and I’ve been trying to figure it out. He has been a worry for years now, so I didn’t realize it was anything different, even this morning.

Hopefully I can get him into the vet in the morning, and maybe they can do an endoscopy and see if my hunch is right, or see why else Flapper is in pain and listless.

Tonight he was such a sweetheart. He is not very active, and he seems in pain, but somewhere inside those feathers he’s still his sweet, upbeat self and he sat with me tonight and chatted like it was just another conversation. He has always been such a trooper. I hope he can continue on for awhile longer.

I love him more than anything.