Foraging Poultry

It might surprise you to learn that despite my immeasurable love for the breed, I don't actually own pugs. I own poultry. Eleanor May is a chicken. She’s been a chicken from the first time we laid eyes on her. When we brought her home she was small, loud and covered in soft, fuzzy down. She’s timid and “ferocious” intermittently. Every one of her nicknames enforces her chicken status: Chickenor, Tiny Chicken Ollie, CHICK-ON!, they’re all loving terms of endearment for our second born.

Mallory Jane, our eldest, is actually a duck. She quacks incessantly when she wants something, she waddles around the house, and she even purses her lips just like a duck bill when the occasion suites her. We've been calling her Duckie for so long, it’s a wonder she responds to her real name.

Both girls share a “fowl” affinity for pecking at the ground. They make a lovely contented poultry noise as the scour the floor for any delicious morsel, such as a dead insect, or an important phone number.

Every time we let them outside they canvas their small enclosed yard looking for something to make Mummy shriek “G@d D&mm!t Leave it!” as I run outside to forcibly extract the item from their mouths, because if I don’t, it’ll certainly be yak-ed up on the rug in a half hour’s time.
Lately, they’ve been concentrating on a particular corner of the fence, but every time we went out there to see if they were eating something, there was nothing in their mouths except dirt. They weren’t getting sick, so we just let it go. Dirt is high in vitamins and minerals after all. So I thought nothing of it. Until last week…

Around 11PM on Tuesday, the pugs were let outside for one final pit stop before bed. I was getting ready for bed when Dan shouted “Amanda come look at this rabbit…it’s inside the fence!” I hurried down the stairs yelling, “Get Eleanor!” It was too late; Ellie had spotted the rabbit and took off after it. The rabbit first tried to escape by jumping over the fence; but it couldn’t make it over and it ricocheted off the snow fence a few times like a pro-wrestler bouncing off the ropes before his final move. Except this rabbit was full of terror instead of bravado. When the rabbit realized it couldn’t flee over the top, it decided it better run from the rapidly approaching pug. Dan & I were standing there with the door WIDE open watching the split second spectacle unfold. I shrieked as I saw a terrified little gray streak with a white puff tail whiz over the back step followed by a small fawn pug in all her glory, ears and tongue flapping in the wind, tail uncurled, hurling herself after the rabbit just as fast as she could. After another lap ‘round the perimeter of the fence, the rabbit finally managed to duck under and Ellie called off her chase, content for the moment.

Mind you Mallory was outside the WHOLE time. She saw the rabbit the moment she walked out the door, but wasn’t interested. She stood there watching the two go at it; then she just wandered over to where the rabbit had started off and started munching on the rabbit poo.

After the rabbit was gone, Ellie came over and joined her in looking for pellets in the usual place we THOUGHT they were snacking on the dirt. Dan & I just stood there in shock. Then we rounded up the pugs and went to bed.

At least now we know why the pugs always go over to that one corner of the fence. They like to eat rabbit sh*t. Great.