The alarm went off at 5:30 am. this morning.  That was okay because Peter, the Rooster, had been crowing for an hour already.  We (MFH and I) drug ourselves out of bed and staggered to the kitchen.

MFH started the pancakes.  I started the coffee.

We ate breakfast and I changed into running clothes.  Boom!  I was out the door to pound out 10 miles before we had to leave for church.

It was a lovely morning!  The sun was shining.  It was 80F  83% humidity.  Perfect!  The run was easy and uneventful.  The snake skeleton from yesterday was still there but it had been run over quite a few times and looking rather bedraggled.

I flew into the house, showered, changed and hopped into the car and we were off for church.

By the time church was over, it was definitely warmer than 80F.  I thought of the chickens.  They must be cooking.

As soon as we got home, I changed clothes (again) grabbed a couple of buckets.  (Taking a quick glance at the thermometer, I saw that it was 93F.)  The first bucket, I filled with ice.  The second one, I took to the hose on the side of the house.

I  turned on the hose and went down to the chicken area, placed the bucket of ice inside the fence.  The chickens knew, then, what I was going to do and they were excited!  Back to the hose.  The water coming out of the hose had cooled off by now, so I filled that second bucket with cool water.

Back to the chickens with the bucket of water.  I emptied out one of their water troughs and filled it with the water, went back to the hose, refilled the bucket again and filled the second water trough.

The chickens were stamping their little(?) feet impatiently.  They wanted the ice.  Now!  So, dumped half of the ice into the first water trough and ZOOM!  Ten chickens shoving and pushing each other trying to be the first one to the ice cold water.

While they were crowding around the first water trough, I was able to more leisurely put the rest of the ice into the second water trough.  I was pretty amazed to find that the ice in the first trough was already just slivers!  Wow!  I knew it was warm but did not realize it was THAT warm.

I stood back and enjoyed the show.  The Babies, were taking long deep drinks of the cold, ice water.  Greta was just patiently waiting her turn.  The Rover’s were running around like mad, trying to find an opening around the Daryl’s.

The Daryl’s had parked themselves firmly in front of both of the water troughs.  The were playing “Bobbing for Ice Cubes” and were gobbling up the ice as fast as they could.  “Too bad to the rest of the chickens if you did not use the sense God gave you to seize the opportunity of ice when it is available!” they were saying.

And Peter!?  He was just standing there in the middle of his ladies crowing his little heart out.  He was so excited to see the ice water and was too busy telling everybody within earshot as to what was going on, that he was missing out on the cold water.  Some day, he will learn…