Rustina the Palmdale Chicken

 This story has been sitting in the back of my mind and it needs to be told though it might be old and stale by now. Chicken can get that way.

Last fall when we returned to Palmdale, our neighbor Jack, 2 doors down, had adopted an abandoned chicken that lived over the fence in the property behind the RV park. He fed her corn but he also got fed up because she was pestering him and hanging around the place all the time. Once we watched as he pitched her back over the fence to get her away. That was fine with us and we were somewhat amused. Then Jack did the unthinkable. He sold his camper, packed up and went back to Minnesota, abandoning the abandoned chicken. We discussed the best way for the chicken to travel with Jack and it was suggested that “plucked and frozen” might be best way but I don’t think he even considered that. By the way, this was a Rhode Island Red chicken we are talking about and since she was becoming a pet, people began calling her Rusty.

Once Jack left, Rusty began making friends with other Palmdale Residents. Our neighbors next door, Lyle and Judy fed her some happy hour snacks but once Rusty deposited some droppings on their patio, she was discouraged from coming back. Don fed her once, but I yelled at him that I didn’t want to encourage the chicken on our patio either.

At the Palmdale Tenant’s Committee meeting in December, Don made the announcement that Lyle and Judy would be taking charge of the chicken and her name was now Rustina because clearly Rusty is a rooster’s name and this was a hen. Our neighbors Mike and Deb across from us who live in a big fifth-wheel began feeding Rustina creamed corn and oatmeal, and making sure she had plenty of water as chickens need a lot of water. Rustina would follow us up to the Rec Center when we went up to exercise in the morning and she became quite popular around the place enjoying patio parties with various residents.

Rustina

One day, we were amused because Rustina was roosting on the chair in front of Lyle and Judy’s house. It didn’t look like a very good place to roost for a chicken. Up until then she had flown back across the fence to roost. Then things became much less amusing. We have a nicely sheltered railing by our front steps right next to our porch and Rustina decided that was her place to roost every night as the sun went down. She would have preferred being in the porch but that was never going to happen.  It didn’t take long for us to realize that this was not going to work. When we opened the door in the morning it swung across the landing and smeared chicken shit all over the place.

Christmas Eve Dinner (Dick, Terry Mike, Deb and Jean)

On Christmas Eve we hosted a dinner party and as our guests were preparing to leave we gave them instructions about how to exit our porch without disturbing Rustina too much and avoiding walking in the chicken shit. One time Deb found a white egg under her camper and brought it over to show it to us. I was skeptical about whether Rustina layed the egg as it was white but Deb was so excited that I didn’t want to disillusion her. So the story remains that Rustina laid an egg.

We decided to prevent the chicken from roosting on our porch. We shooed her away and I tried to get Don to throw her over the fence like we saw Jack do but he wasn’t into that. She kept coming back. So we started covering the porch landing with the Valley Star which we subscribe to. That worked fairly well at keeping the shit off the wood except when the wind blew the paper up on the siding. We still had the problem with the door and at times used the back door to walk around the porch. We decided to make the area uncomfortable for Rustina. Lyle provided us with some chicken wire which Don crumpled up and tied on the railing with tie straps. It didn’t take her long to get comfortable with that. Don found a board and a bunch of 3-inch self-tapping screws which he put in the board so the screws sharp ends projected up out of the board and there was no place for her to step that didn’t have a sharp screw. We watched her as she tried to settle down on the screws and the first night, she didn’t set her body down but neither did she leave. The second night she adapted to the screws and made herself at home. I googled ways to repel chickens and sprinkled cinnamon and cayenne pepper all over the board, but that didn’t make a difference.

Meanwhile, I was also talking to people and discussing where to get rid of a nuisance chicken since Rustina had clearly become that. Suggestions included calling animal control or making it the park’s problem since we are paying rent there. Meanwhile Deb continued to feed the chicken. I talked to her about how this couldn’t go on. She stopped feeding Rustina and the amount of poop was down about 90%. I felt bad about starving Rustina. Finally, I decided to call around to chicken farmers looking for advice. I found a CSA (CD&A Mini Ranch in San Benito). The lady I talked to said that they raise Rhode Island Reds and would take her off our hands.

Mike and Deb’s next-door neighbor, Grace had a couple of dog crates by their camper. They agreed to allow us to use a crate to relocate Rustina if we made sure to clean it out good which we were happy to do. Grace informed us that she is able to communicate with animals and she had discussed with Rustina the problems she was causing on our porch and our desire to be rid of her. She said that Rustina understood but she was apprehensive as you would expect her to be. She also said that we have the name wrong and her name was Beverly. So one morning in January, I rode along with Mike and Deb as we hauled Beverly in the back of their pick-up truck to the CSA and handed her off to the chicken farm where she belonged. Mike cleaned up the crate and returned it to Grace.