Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Green Eggs and Saute

If you read my post titled My First Chicken, you'll recall I mentioned another chicken we had named Sauté. I never tire of the looks on peoples faces when I tell them I had a chicken named Sauté.  When we got the goose, I desperately wanted to name her Pâté.  But, I was the only one who saw the humor in having a chicken named Sauté and a goose named Pâté.  So we ended up calling her Lucy the Loose Goose.

Sauté was a wild, feisty hen who wanted nothing to do with being held, wouldn't lay her eggs in the hen house and was downright mean to the neighbor's cat who would stalk her constantly.  This stalking went on for about a year before one day, I found the cat, the hens and the goose all curled up together napping in the sun.  I guess the old saying is true, if you can't beat `em, join `em.

I remember mom saying she was an Araucana but now that I know more about chicken breeds and looking at old photos of her, I'm not so sure.  She definitely laid green eggs which I'd have to hunt for in the rows and rows of plants and shrubs.  But I don't recall her having ear-tufts,a beard or muffs.  So I'm not exactly sure what breed she was.

My favorite memory of her was in the fall after the first rain.  The subterranean termites would take flight out of the ground where they had been feasting on old rotting roots.  Sauté would park herself at one of these vents and gobble up each and every termite that came out.  At the end of the day, she would literally wattle back to the hen house.  It was the only time that she was so fat and full that she had no will to resist being picked up and you could go out and collect her.  Her crop was so stuffed full, to this day, I don't know how it didn't burst wide open.

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