Noel went to the hardware store, and left the poor, abandoned dogs behind.

Just about everybody has asked, so finally I will post a picture with proof:

They just stand out in the rain. Sometimes they look indignant that somebody is sprinkling water on them, but mostly they do their normal stuff, or as normal as it can be. Only during the worst downpours have I ever seen them take refuge in their room, although it is open and available to them all day.

When the sun comes out, they fluff up and dry out. If it doesn't come out, they seem to just stay out in the rain all day until sunset, when they get up on their perch and preen in the nice dry chicken room.

I had to euthanize Joan today. She'd been unwell since mid-January, and last week took a steep turn for the worse, hiding behind the compost bins and not wanting to come out of the nest box. I thought she was broody, but she was sick. This photo shows how yellow her comb and wattles had become, and she was having trouble walking and had lost her appetite. Note the bowl of tuna in front of her, uneaten.

I took her to the Very Expensive Avian Vet on Friday and spent scads of money on her, and found out she was worse than we thought. Her blood iron was lower than the vet had ever seen in a living bird.

We did subcutaneous fluids, a crop injection of hydrating fluids, injected antibiotics. We kept her in a brooder inside, with a heat lamp, all weekend. We shot food and water down her throat. Saturday she seemed to perk up and we were hopeful, but Sunday night she began to worsen and yesterday she did not want to move any more. So today I went to the hardware store and bought an axe.

It's not easy to kill an animal you have raised from a baby and treated as a pet. But by raising an animal in captivity you take on certain responsibilities. I could have spent more money and had the vet inject her, but unlike a dog or cat, there is a humane way to kill a chicken in your own yard.

She's buried under the sour cherry tree, because last summer she was the one who discovered that she could jump up and eat the cherries off the branches.

And here's how I remember her:

Then an after-swim roll in the straw I'm using to mulch the new garden plot.

Carole made a beeline for the pile of loose sand by the pond and took a long and relaxing dust bath.

Watch her bathing (in which Rosie gets bored partway through and goes to see what the other chickens are up to):

Joan was intrigued by the idea of the pond, but not enough to do more than peck a little at the curly rush.

But mostly they followed me around cooing and chuckling as I weeded, cleared leaves from beds, and so on.

And when I'd had enough of them underfoot, I gave them a handful of scratch to enjoy in their chicken gym:

But this captures the "OMG, the aquarium is on fire!!" cognitive dissonance of the volcano best:

The live effect of the volcano is somewhere in between the two photos. It is mighty fine.

The fish are, predictably, scared out of their ever-living minds at the thing, and have been trying desperately to swim away from it. But soon they will come to appreciate the volcano and we can all be happy.

Edited to add:

Ted was a good boy, an enormous sweetheart of a dog who could be a pain in the butt, but was very dear to us. He loved to come over and look at the chickens, who fascinated him.

And he felt very at home in our house, from numerous daylong play sessions on weekends to the occasional overnight stay (when his people had a baby, and when they went on vacation).

At the very end he was sad and sick and miserable, and we're all glad that at least he didn't have to suffer.

We've agreed that Ted will be buried in our yard, once his ashes are returned. I chose the spot by the gate where he always peed as he arrived. The gate meant good things for Ted: coming into the yard to play at the beginning of the day, and leaving to go home and eat and lie down after a long day of fun.

But today Carole laid her first egg, and I don't think we will have the same trouble.

From the left: Liza, Joan, and Carole.

Carole's egg is so large it doesn't really fit in our egg carton (saved from some large eggs from the store). A big egg from a big chicken.

I immediately went and gathered several snails for her from the hydrangeas. I see a much less-chewed garden in my future.

Our first egg. Funny blue speckles on it -- maybe she'll end up laying bluish eggs, or maybe not. And they will probably get bigger as she lays more often. Nothing's perfect the first time. But this weekend the pancakes will be a little closer to home.

Joan was also acting weird but apparently did not produce an egg, so we may get two tomorrow.

A few weeks ago, Goldie had a bout of Kennel Cough, which is basically a dog chest infection. She was very under the weather and spent one afternoon outside with me in the garden, while the chickens were out and about. They all did very well together, and after that, dogs and chickens seemed to reach a certain detente. In part because the dogs realized that chickens produce chicken poop out of their butts, and chicken poop is much better than feathers.

So we get a lot of this:

OK, it's gross. But it's also much less worrying than the dog lunging at the chickens as if to kill them all the time.

Also, the chickens are larger and more able to defend themselves (including the occasional peck on the nose), so the dogs are less inclined to get too close to the pointy end of things.

So now they are locked up for the night, and with any luck we will not have any more losses. It's a real bummer to go out and see only three little faces in the yard, though.

It works very well, indeed. Especially on Rosie's extra-thick coat.