Well, this is interesting.

I may have mentioned that the girls seem very distressed at night, chirping loudly and flying up on our shoulders as if (I have suspected) they want to get up high--the theory being that their ancestors nested in trees and that's where they feel safe at night, too.

Also, we have been wondering if, in the midst of all this nighttime distress, they might get to a point where they march into the henhouse and put themselves to bed. We'd heard that hens will do that, but our had not, and it left us a little confused about exactly when bedtime should be.

As a result, bedtime, when we lock the girls in The Vault, has been a little confusing and noisy.

Tonight I got home from painting class around 8:30 and Scott said he had not yet put the girls to bed, figuring I might want to do it. So we went out there and lo and behold, they had somehow found a way to hop up to the rafters in the top of the henhouse, and they were all settled down quite happily, 6 feet above ground, just under the roof, sound asleep.

Hmmm. This would all be fine and good except that the roof of this henhouse, an old greenhouse-style wavy plastic sort of roof, is one of the weaker points and I do worry about a racoon yanking a section off and getting in. So we can't leave them up there. They must sleep in The Vault or some kind of enclosed structure whether they like it or not. As much as we hated to do it, we had to lift their warm sleepy little bodies off the rafters and put them, squaking and complaining, into their box. What to do? Perhaps we could elevate The Vault? Or build something secure up in the rafters for them?

Because of course, we have nothing better to do than take on additional construction projects we're not qualified for to make our chickens happy.