Our Neighbors

The neighborhood we live in is unlike one we've ever lived in before. It's located in an unicorporated part of the county and is somewhat of a strange mix of suburban-rural design. For example, our block is typical suburbia: We're at the end of a street lined with sidewalks and 3 bedroom track homes. And yet, around the corner are sidewalk-less streets with homes on large plots of land and residents who own horses as pets.

One of the interesting, and somewhat endearing, aspects of our neighborhood are its protected chickens. These macots mostly congregate in the downtown section of our neighborhood, but there is a single red hen that hangs out across the street on our neighbor's front lawn. Until yesterday, she kept to herself and never ventured into our yard. I always assumed it was because she could sense our dogs.

Yet, it was proven to me that this bird was no Chicken Little.

Knowing we may only have a few hours of clear skies, Josh pulled the lawnmower out of the garage to give the grass a haircut, and lo and behold, the red hen waddles up the sidewalk and starts following him (and the lawnmower) around the yard.

Here's Josh, looking a little nervous, but appeasing me by allowing the chicken to approach him. (I believe its pretty obvious that we are not country-people).

The chicken was all about the fresh weeds.

After Josh was done with the yard work, the chicken poked around the lawn for a few minutes and then wandered off to visit another house. In honor of the visiting hen, Josh and I ate Trader Joe's orange chicken for dinner. :)