Good morning from Chicken Paradise Hawaii! Half blue sky, half cloud today.
Meet Happa
Happa (“leaf”) is a rose-ringed parakeet, a beautiful bright green. Someone our farmer knows found her in a church garden in town: she had fallen from her nest and was covered in blood, tiny, with blood on her neck. We honestly weren’t sure she would make it, but she made a full recovery.
The plan was to let her go once she was well, but something seems to have stayed wrong around her shoulder. She can’t fly straight; when she tries, she spins around. She can’t return to the wild, so she lives here at the farm.
These parakeets aren’t native to Hawaii. Escaped pets multiplied in town, and now there are lots of them around the farm too. Happa is a girl, so the ring around her neck is faint; boys have a clearer ring, and some even talk.
Living near the coop, Happa is good at imitating hens, and at a goat’s “meh.” Madara the cat likes her and visits her cage, but Happa doesn’t like cats, so she answers with a goat-impression attack. She loves fruit (apple, banana, papaya) and especially the peels. Her neighbor is Walter the rooster, so we’re hoping she’ll learn a cock-a-doodle-doo someday.
Hare-chan bounces back
Hare-chan was on the cover of last year’s calendar. After that he got into a big fight: his beak broke, his comb shrank to about a third of its size, and his tail feathers came out. After some time in a cage, to our surprise, his beak grew back and his comb is tall again. Our farmer explains that a comb is full of blood vessels, so it can shrink and come back. He still fights if he’s let out, so he lives in a roomy cage and goes out for walks now and then.
Around the coop
Luna and Salaryman are dust-bathing in Hachimitsu’s castle while Basil keeps watch. The perches we added are packed. Haku and Ryu, both born this spring, are growing fast; Haku is already bigger than Flute, yet both still make little peeping sounds instead of a proper crow.
And here is Namonakimono, a favorite of ours, whose face looks a bit like Pen-chan’s. A boy visiting his grandfather found her as a chick and raised her carefully over his summer vacation. When he had to go home, he didn’t want her simply let go, so she came to us. She arrived undernourished and caught a cold that affected her eyes, but she recovered wonderfully and lays eggs now. She must be four or five years old.
Thank you for watching Chicken Paradise Hawaii! See you next time.