This kid is eight years old!
I think he had a great birthday. He wore his new soccer team shirt to school, and brought birthday cupcakes shaped like Despicable Minions to his class.
I came home a bit early to get Gav's gifts wrapped before the kids came home. But when I got home, I heard a hen crying like her little chicken heart would break. Poor Dandelion flew the coop, crossed the road (why?) and was hiding in the raspberry bushes. I went in after her, and she stopped making her pitiful crying sounds, but every time I got close to her she took off through the raspberry stems. It's like she just wanted me in there with her but had no intention of being caught. Eventually I stood up after spending at least 15 minutes crawling through the bushes cooing at Dandelion, and looked over to see the postman standing there with a package, staring at me. My hair was full of raspberry leaves and I must have looked lovely.
I decided to wait for Lucy to get home to rescue her hen. I tried to help, but Dandelion wasn't going to allow herself to be saved even by Lucy. Plan B: get a decoy chicken! Lucy grabbed Marvinette in hopes of luring Dandelion out. Instead, Marvinette got free and we had TWO chickens in the raspberries. We eventually caught Marvinette and returned her to the coop. We tried the gopher trap, baited with the chickens' favorite corn on the cob, but Dandelion is too smart for that. Finally we decided that Dandelion was just going to have to be a free-range chicken because we had Gavin's birthday party to attend to.
Angel Food cake with strawberries, as requested!
Favorite gift: a new lariat and plastic calf head for roping practice.
Luckily, Gavin didn't have to use his new roping skills on Dandelion. While we were eating pizza and cake, some Norwich students came along and decided to rescue our chicken for us. We thanked them with copious amounts of fresh tomatoes and salsa and some free calf roping lessons.
