A Journal of Urban Living

It was hot enough to fry an egg in a pocket here at the Dilwedel compound today.  The mercury hit 103F at the closest weather station atop Mount Washington.  Backyard digital thermometer registered 104.7F.

A pocket? you ask.  Wouldn’t that be messy?  Yes it was. It was an accident — not one of Peter’s culinary experiments.

Yesterday Peter fetched four freshly-laid eggs from the coop. He put one in his pocket and smashed it while reaching for the other eggs.  (The chickens have developed a nasty habit of laying under the roost instead of in the convenient nesting box.)  He showed me the gooey spot and we laughed about it. Then he shimmied out of his shorts and left them on the concrete step next to the back door, where they sat all day in the sun…

When I picked them up to throw them in laundry this afternoon, much of the egg was cooked — and caked — on the inside of his pocket.  I had to use the hose on full blast to spray it off.

So there you go! Hot enough to fry an egg in a pocket.

While the East Coast got soaked, we’ve been in a beastly heatwave that was lethal to the poultry population at the Dilwedel compound.

Wyandotte the chicken succumbed to the 103 degree heat yesterday. After only five chickens emerged this morning, I found her under the roost.

I feel terrible and neglectful. We’ve had a lot going on and didn’t check on them during the midday heat yesterday. It was crazy though. Sally and John departed in the evening. Joanna arrived unexpectedly — a hurricane-related detour after her trip to NorCal.

Maybe if we had checked on them we would’ve spotted Wyandotte’s symptoms and been able to rehydrate her and or take her inside to cool her off. The rest of the flock is fine and they had plenty of water. Chickens are delicate but she seemed too young and healthy to be done in by the heat. I never thought that we’d lose a chicken in her prime. It seems so random and wasteful. As I told Peter tearfully this morning, “I didn’t want her to die! I wanted to kill her and eat her!” Though given how much I cry when our flock is culled naturally, we’ll have to see if I can actually pull that off.

We will remember Wyandotte fondly. She was a beautiful hen and a good layer. I loved the dark green sheen on her black neck feathers. She was the first to give us eggs. I remember how happy we were when Peter picked her up and found that first light brown egg in a little grass nest that she scratched behind the compost bins. When she was just a chick, we couldn’t tell her apart from Barred Rock. They both looked like balls of black fluff with yellow bellies. She liked to boss around the rest of the girls but she will be missed by her friends, Australorp and Barbara the Barred Rock.

A brief memorial service was held this evening and attended by Jo, Gabe, Raquel, Peter and Simon, who screamed the whole time. She was buried under the fig tree in the front yard.

Every morning Simon and I let the chickens out and watch them traipse around and listen to them squawk.  We usually don’t get so H5N1-close to them but he needed a little calming and nothing is calming like hens.

The chickens are growing so the coop construction must be completed soon.  The drip irrigation heads are installed and the lines need to be run.  The Valencia Orange is the last of the potted citrus that needs to be planted.  (The kumquat will stay in a pot.)  The fig and the bay we lost this summer need replacing.  It’s also about time to set up the seedling starting station in the shed.