We have a chicken! Just temporarily.
Our garden has been experiencing a grasshopper infestation. They have done major damage to the grapes and blueberries, in particular, though pretty much every plant has been affected. We've tried everything to control the grasshopper population, from sprays to netting, but experts agree that the only thing that really works is the presence of a duck or chicken*.
So we got a chicken. Dev bought her for $10 from Peking Poultry in Chinatown. We named her Lenore (Dev used to have chickens named Lindsay, Lolita, Loretta, and Lulu).
Our plan is to keep her in our yard for a few days to clear out the bugs and then situate her in a permanent home with our friend Luke who keeps chickens in his yard.
Meanwhile we destroyed all the grasshoppers' eggs by aggressively weeding and tilling their nesting area, so hopefully we won't have this problem again next year**.
Predictably, Dev is already attached to the chicken and wants to keep her long-term, but I'm afraid that with the dogs, a permanent chicken isn't really possible. I will say, she's a very friendly, outgoing chicken, surprisingly unafraid of people, and the kids love seeing her in the yard. Could we build a safe enclosure for her behind the garage and keep her? Maybe . . .
* Well, praying mantises work, too, and we do have a few naturally-occuring ones, but if you buy new praying mantis eggs from a garden store they can take up to two months to hatch and we wanted a solution now.
** Most farmers and gardeners suggest you basically wait out the current grasshopper season (since it's all but impossible to kill them even with strong pesticides) and work on killing their eggs so they don't come back in the spring. But I couldn't bear to stand by and watch the grapes get eaten and we're at least a month away from the consistently cooler temperatures that will kill off the grasshoppers.
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