New Chicken Escape

Every day I re-do the gate and fences of the chicken house, along with piling countless pieces of wood and wire on the roof of the house to prevent jumping over the fence. Almost every day at least one chicken escapes. Recently the pace has accelerated. Two days ago it was two chickens, yesterday it was four. In this picture the girls are camouflaged in the dead grass on the far side of the building that sits between my back yard and Diana's. They are feasting on the countless apples on the ground under her tree. These new escapees are unaware, apparently, that they are doing anything wrong and don't run away from me like Penny does. This makes it more difficult to get them back into the pen. Even though they will follow me if I call them, they tend to get sidetracked. To expedite things, I resort to picking them up, one by one, and carrying them back where they belong.

The dogs have escaped lately, too. I have had to chase Patrick and Benny all over the neighborhood
several times, worrying all the while that they will encounter an escaped chicken. Yesterday one of the horses at the shelter escaped when I was putting hay in his paddock, and it took me over a half hour to catch him. Horses react much like chickens, ignoring you until you are about to grab them, and then racing away. Dogs, on the other hand, prefer to taunt you.......racing up to you happily and then darting away, hiding and then reappearing........generally making a game out of the chase. Some days the things that take up my life seem quite comical.