Happy Hens, originally uploaded by mslaura.

Whoever said that chickens are stupid has obviously not lived with *our* chickens.

We have had quite the saga recently with the girls. First they were totally free-range in the backyard, but over time they discovered their "chicken-hood" and were less and less the fearful, beaten-down factory farm critters that arrived in a box by mail a few months ago.

Being a real chicken means that you run around and scratch in the dirt. You look for bugs and worms and tasty sprouts and you eat them. It's fun to be a chicken, apparently. Our hens were having an absolutely blast.

We'd walk outside and they would run over at lightning speed for a pet and a scratch and a kiss, all fluffy, with dirt-covered beaks and claws from all the digging they were doing.

The digging, however, did not go over well with those of us who were trying to keep the backyard in some sort of presentable state. So we built a big run on the lawn, to fence them in and keep them away from the patches of dirt and mulch that they were scratching in and tossing all over.

But the wily chicks discovered that under grass there is....DIRT! So if you scratch at the grass enough, you will eventually get a nice patch of dirt that is cool and fun to dig in.

Oh, the poor lawn. Dan was so not happy. He is, well, obsessed with lawn perfection these days, so the hens' work was pissing him off mightily. He told me they had to go, and I said no, I would find a solution. What solution, I don't know, but I'll find one.

After an hour or so in the hammock, waiting for inspiration, I hit upon the perfect solution. The hens loved to scratch in a moist, bushy area under a huge sycamore tree in our backyard. It's a square area, with fence behind it on two sides. There are only a few tropical bushes, one lone black bamboo, and then the sycamore tree, surrounded by river rocks.

We don't really care about this area, it just kind of takes care of itself. It's not like we sit there, or walk there, it's just a corner of the yard. But it's pretty centrally located, right next to the BBQ and our patio table.

No grass to mess up, no flowers to destroy. Nice and cool and shady. Lots of dirt to scratch in. Spiders and bugs galore.

Perfect! So I rigged up a temporary pen for them, put their Eglu inside, and so far it has worked out great. Dan is happy, the hens are happy, I'm happy.

Except that...the wily hens can get out if they really, really want to. Twice they have tunneled out under the chicken wire fence. Tunneled out! I solved that problem by placing big river rocks all around the perimeter of the bottom of the chicken wire, and they can't dig underneath river rocks, so that seems to be working.

But the chicken wire is too low. They are somehow fluttering over the top of it. I'm not sure how, they only do it when we're not looking, and only in the morning. Their wings are clipped, so they must be jumping, or climbing...I can't figure it out.

I need to go get some 2x4s and actually build a pen that is high enough to keep them in. Right now I just have chicken wire stapled to the fence, and at the open corner it's wired to a post to hold it upright. Pretty flimsy, and obviously not secure.

Sigh, and I need to do this construction project before we leave on vacation Monday, because I don't want our neighbor boys to have to corral escaped chickens when they come over to collect eggs and check their food and water.

It's easy enough, but it takes me a while to do these little projects, and I have a million other things to do before we leave. It's hard being Mom AND Handywoman around here.