I've misled everyone, I think. My mother said to me yesterday, "Will you quit saying that his throat was slit? It makes it sound like a person killed him!" It's pretty unlikely that a person killed him, we think. I live on a dead-end camp road where all the traffic is from lifelong neighbor-friends. Right now there are less than 10 winter residents on the road. The only person who threatened Roland's life was my cousin, Mark, who hates roosters, but loves me. Plus, being a summer resident, he was having Thanksgiving at his home 35 miles away. He did threaten Roland the very day the bird showed up dead, and I intend to make him feel bad about it the next time we talk. But he wouldn't really kill him. Here's how the bird's wounds are better described (I was really horrified to see him and his eyes were open, so I didn't examine him the way a mature person would have.): (You might not want to read this.) He was on his back and his throat was ripped open. The reason it looked slit to me was that in the middle of the throat was a white divider--a bone or cartilage that ran from his beak down the middle of the wound. It looked like two separate lengthwise injuries down each side of oh! could it be his windpipe? They weren't really slits, though, his entire throat was damaged. I live on a lake, and a few years ago, I saw what looked like a horrible, furry, snake weaving its creepy body in and throughout the rocks on the shore. When the loud screeching stopped, I realized that what I might have seen was a mink. I've never seen another weasel or mink my whole life, but I did see a dead mink on the road once about 4 miles from here. My birds generally spend their days in a pen connected to their house. It is a dog kennel with the sides reinforced with chicken wire. I am fairly confident that it is hawk, dog, raccoon and fox-proof. There are a few breaches in the system that a skinny thing like a mink or weasel could---maybe---get through. My birds get locked in their house every night after they roost, but I'm often lax about what hour I close their little hen door. Nothing has ever bothered them, so the idea of it being a weasel is surprising to me. But not impossible to imagine. It's the total lack of blood on the bird and under him that has me so puzzled. (I did find part of his comb---a tiny tip torn off---the only damage to it. I found that in the house.) I haven't seen any sign of a struggle outside of the house, and the idea that he might have walked home that damaged upsets me, so I stopped looking around yesterday. In the last 24 hours, I've eliminated the hens. They have no blood on them. I feel good about that. The human theory is not impossible, but it would take an especially angry person to toss the bird back into my henhouse. It would have had to be a stranger to my road and it would have had to have happened between 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm on Thanksgiving. Thank you for thinking it through with me. And thank you for your sympathy. I was going to write again about Roland because I'd given him such a bad rap before. Once he figured out having sex with animate objects, he seemed to settle down. I had become very fond of my little charge (pun intended) in the 28 days I knew him.

I'm with Agnespuffin - send us some of that moisture, please. It's so dry here. We haven't had but 1/2" of rain this year. The wildfires are nearly a daily occurrence around here with quite a few homes burned to the ground. With the constant wind we are having, also, the firefighters are having trouble getting the fires put out. We now have several of the Forestry Service planes/helicopters station here to help out. Mary

cavamarie, people have concerns about e-coli and I know nothing about that. I've used fresh manure in gardens almost every year I've gardened and I've never sacrificed fruit for foliage as you would expect. I've only had a problem once---in a spot where a ton of fresh chicken manure sat for a month before I could get it spread. Everything we planted in that drenched spot died. Mix the manure in well before you plant and I think you'll have results similar to mine, providing you, like me, need to apply nitrogen fertilizer every year. I have 16 chickens. I clean their house once a year (where I suppose, it's technically been composting)and spread it on my garden straight from the coop prior to planting. I used much fresher chicken manure in my early 20s---sometimes with dead chickens in it---which I got from a farmer. With really fresh manure I spread it three weeks before planting per advice I received from an "Organic Gardening" course I took in 1974. People always tell secondhand horror stories about chicken manure, but I've never heard a horror story from someone who's actually used it. I'm always worried that my experience with chicken manure won't pan out in the rest of the country, so rather than take my word for it, try it in half of your rows and see for yourself.

Here's an interesting article about chickens and gardens: That's What Hens Are For Basically, hens are safe in a garden but only if you set it up to be hen-safe. If you just let them out into some random garden, they'll eat it up and destroy it. Basically, there are plants they will eat and plants they won't eat, and some plants (like beans) that they'll eat but where most of the crop is too high for them to reach. So you need to keep them away from the plants that they'll eat, excepting what you decide to let them nibble on for their health. Also, you should never leave them around seedlings/small plants, even ones that they don't eat, because their scratching can kill them; however, established plants are generally safe against scratching. In turn, the hens reward you with free weeding, bug control, and fertilizer, and what they eat in the garden significantly lowers the cost of their feed (as well as makes their eggs healthier -- hens fed greens produce much healthier eggs).