It is 87°F (nearly 31°C) at my desk as I type this. It’s been hot and dry lately in purportedly rainy East Hawaii, with road dust thick in the air and grass crunching underfoot. The entire Big Island has been in a state of drought all year.
(An aside: U.S. Drought Monitor is a great resource for checking local data, but cross your fingers that the dumbasses—and in early 2025, you know which ones I mean—don’t find its plug and either pull it or trip over it.)
You may recall that, like most of our district, our house is on catchment water, so we’re operating under shower and other water conservation measures. Yes, we still shower, but the tap does not stay on the whole time you’re lathering! 😂 It reminds me of January of 2023 when I shared Five Signs the Wet Side of Hawaii is Not.
I was standing at my desk one day this January and got distracted by a chicken outside my window. (Not a non sequitur, I swear!) She was pecking at the fence around the dog yard (not the smartest place to be) and I felt like she kept looking at the window. Looking at me. Hunh. 🤔
We have a bird bath in the back, but we also keep a dish of water on the ground for whoever needs it. I walked through the house and outside to find the dish empty. I filled it, set it back on the ground, and made some of the obnoxious, ineffective little tongue clicks we hairless bipeds think attract our feathered friends.
To my surprise, the hen did rush around the house for a drink, slowing as she approached me with a soft, answering coo-coo-coo. I realized, I know that coo. It was Rita!
Okay, so the story loses something now, because (I can’t believe) I’ve never told you about Rita.
Feral chickens come and go here, but for a while we had a Rooster in Residence. (I doubt we gave him a nickname; roosters have a shockingly short lifespan in the Puna Wilds.) A pair of his hens remained, with maybe some scrap-feeding encouragement. We called the blonde hen Marilyn and the “redhead” Rita. I’ve no idea how long they lasted—it was during the Covid time warp—but in late 2022, I shared on the Blog that feral chickens (likely our Hollywood ladies) were laying eggs around our house. Their yolks were radiant as the sun, and I had pictorial evidence.
Surprisingly, the more aggressive Marilyn was the first to disappear permanently. Maybe she found a nice farm down the street. 😬 After that, Rita didn’t always stay on our property, but we were part of her regular rounds. Rita is the feral chicken—among the gazillions of feral chickens who have crossed our path—who probably came closest to becoming a pet. In fact, she would have done if it weren’t for the arrival of a certain stray pup with a very strong prey drive.
My newsletter folks might recall that Rita persisted for a while, even in the face of Sadie. She was laying eggs under our carport last spring, but finally moved on.
Until this year, when the rains stopped. (Stopped more. December was also very dry.)
Rita generally doesn’t get too cozy with us and our dog—there’s a reason she’s lasted this long—but she does occasionally get stupid.
I wonder sometimes if she’s deliberately messing with Sadie. Over the weekend, we were sitting on the lanai and Rita caused a near-kerfuffle, suddenly leaping from the roof next to us like a caped superhero. Not really… anyone who’s been around chickens knows that they do not fly gracefully, or quietly! 😂 (Do they do anything quietly?)
We had just convinced Sadie to maintain Angel rather than Demon pursuit mode when Rita climbed the steps and stared through the back door at us. Hey dog, you’re not the boss of me! 😈 Fortunately, it’s a metal mesh door and Rita wasn’t very squawky, but it was a good training opportunity.
Rita and another hen have also been skirting the edges of our yard and having loud chicken drama most mornings. (I suspect the other hen is one who barely survived an encounter with Sadie in our yard last year.) The Hubs thought they were angry because he’d raided a clutch of abandoned eggs at the edge of our street, but they’d started before then.
Last week, I discovered one source of the chicken drama.
I was racing out for an appointment when a very stressed Rita accosted me at the carport, indicating an empty eggshell on the ground next to my car. I couldn’t decide if she was pissed because it was hers and someone had eaten it, or she was pissed because someone else had laid an egg in her territory and she ate it. Either way, we searched the usual places and did not find a nest.
A couple of mornings later, Rita was making the kind of ruckus which does not encourage good Sadie behavior, so I went to check on her, again at the carport. The hen led me to more empty eggshells, this time two eggs worth. With no other ideas, I told her I saw what had happened, that I was sorry about her eggs, and would keep an eye out. Feel free to laugh (I am now!), but, apparently satisfied, she stopped cluck-shrieking and strode off into the jungle.
Something began to tickle at my brain then, much as it had the first time I saw the hen again a few months ago. Rita’s behavior was familiar… A few hours later, I saw the egg-eating culprit at the edge of our driveway—a mongoose!
We don’t often see mongooses on our property, though they are encroaching on our neighborhood. Ninja Kitty killed a juvenile one years ago, so I always trusted his legend to keep them at bay. I haven’t seen one since last week, nor have I found any more eggshells by my car… 🤞🤞 Here’s hoping the sneaky little bugger finds easier prey somewhere else, before Sadie finds a new furry friend to chase.