A Visitor

Violet makes herself at home on the front porch.

 

I was sitting upstairs at my computer, where I'd been for a couple of hours, working. I heard a knock on the front door. We have an old house, and sometimes people aren't quite sure what to do with the old Victorian doorbell (you twist it). So they usually knock on the glass storm door.

I went downstairs. Glancing out the old beveled glass window in the door, I didn't see anyone waiting. I wondered if someone had knocked and left something on the porch, and looked down through the glass. There was Violet, standing there looking up at me. Then I realized Violet had tapped on the glass door with her beak. She was my visitor.

I went outside to talk to her. She had been on the porch earlier, fluffing herself up on the porch swing, but this time she seemed to want something. She hurried off the porch, then stopped and looked at me again. So I headed around the house and she followed at my heels, trotting along in a business-like hurry beside me. It was gusty outside, and I'd checked on the Big Girls and the Small Girls early in the morning, letting Violet, Oreo, and Clover out to free range in the yard, but keeping Pearl and Cocoa in the coop. This meant closing the run door, but I'd put food and water out in the yard for the Big Girls.

I fiddled around a bit, picking up a few small branches that had blown into the yard, greeting Oreo and Clover, and checking their food and water. Violet regarded me expectantly. I didn't bring treats. Remembering that I had some fading lettuce in the fridge, I went back inside, and came out to find Violet waiting again on the doorstep.

She happily took the lettuce, but something told me that was still not what she wanted. Intead of wandering away to scratch and work in the yard, she stayed with me. I crossed over to the coop, unlocked the run door, and watched her hurry by. Pearl and Cocoa scattered out of her way, and she bustled over to the nesting box.

Ah. OK. Since the chicken theft, Oreo and Clover have not laid a single egg. But Violet has been laying an egg every morning, like clockwork, before I let her out. This morning I thought maybe one of the girls or K had already gotten her egg, and hadn't realized she'd be in need of the nesting box.

I left her to her laying, and went back to my work. But every time I thought about her pecking at the door, like a neighbor who'd come knocking to borrow a cup of sugar, it made me laugh. It was hen humor that I'd been sorely missing over the last few weeks.