I worry that what I’m about to tell you may tarnish my image, but I must confess: I hate sewing. All the measuring and the cutting and the piecing and the pinning and the ironing – to me, there is nothing more tedious, nothing more drudging. I do like the results, though, and some things can only be had by sewing them yourself, so now and then, after weeks, months, sometimes even years of procrastination, I break down and sew something. Like this:
Snow Birds
Oh, I should have done this months ago. You see, the roosters have favorite hens and they tend to over-utilize them, if you know what I mean, which leaves the hens with bald spots on their backs where the roosters mount them. Without feathers, a hen has no protection from a rooster’s amorous activities, which can result in more serious injury the next time he gets that certain look in his eye. The solution to this problem is to dress the affected hens in little protective aprons.
Now let me just tell you that this particular hen did not appreciate my efforts on her behalf at all. She’s crazy to escape that little blue bit of fabric, and she’s terrorizing the other hens right now, the way she’s running around like a… a… a chicken with a new apron. I’m sure she’ll settle down. Eventually. I hope so, anyway, because there are a dozen other hens out there who could use aprons of their own. I don’t want them to get a phobia.
Too funnie!!! I think it’s adorable and apparently needed for functionality too.
I’m right there with the sewing though. I just have a hard time getting into it. I have a new machine now too but beyond the fact that I cannot sit down in front of it and reach it right now, I just have not taken the time to try it out.
Hope your chickens keep their… ahem… aprons on.
It seems that rooster should get some sort of protection — like a mask, or some duct tape, on his, um, pecker, or gloves for his, whatever they are (as you can see I have no idea how roosters get amorous)!
You’re too funny.
I’ll be happy to enlighten you, though.
The rooster, in order to express his desires, first performs a mating dance to entice his prospective date. He fans out the feathers of one wing and scratches at the dirt with his opposite foot while hopping in a circle around his lady. He looks rather spastic, actually, and always makes me laugh. If she’s feeling frisky, she hunkers down as he comes around to her backside and he hops onto her back. She lifts her tail, he lowers his, and then he hops back off, satisfied. It’s all very discreet. If she’s not interested, she runs away, squawking loudly. Sometimes, he won’t take no for an answer and he chases her down and mounts her anyway. Nobody ever told those boys that no means no.
The part I find most difficult in sewing is pulling out my sewing machine dusting it off – searching the dusty corners of my memory as to how it works and then threading it. Once I am past all of that – its a breeze and I love watching it all come together. However, when I am sewing something that requires a pattern – well, lets just say I sweat a lot and typically try to use really cheap material so as to try and help ease my “what if I mess up” syndrome. Someday I hope to have a little sewing nook where I can leave my machine out, ‘oiled up’ and ready to fly whenever the fever to sew strikes me.
Are you planning on making a few more of these “amorous aprons”?
HOW are they fastened onto the hens? I was hoping your picture would open up into a larger one if I clicked on it but it doesn’t. (Is that typical of wordpress – I just switched over to wordpress from blogspot and thinking of buying “wordpress for dummies”!
No, I forgot to set it to open on a larger picture.
My mistake. WordPress is pretty easy to customize.
They are fastened with little elastic loops that slip around their wings. I may have to tweak the design a bit so they stay down better on the back. I’ve been told this model rides up a little, exposing the area they’re meant to protect! We’ll need about a dozen more, but it only takes one fat quarter and about 20 minutes to make one, so I should have that done pretty quickly.
I’m so very glad I’m not a hen.
LOL…this is so funny. I mean, you just sewed chastity belts for your hens!
Well, not quite. They can still do the deed. They just won’t get chaffed.