Yes, whenever one of my personal heroes passes away, I reach out to my animal companions for comfort and distraction. I will say that while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg may be gone, her spirit will inspire generations to come. This I know.
But, before that surprise hit me, right at sunset that signaled the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, I had been thinking about how things are sometimes right in front of you, but you don’t really see them.
That leads me to chicken feet. I guess I originally thought that all chicken feet were alike, with claws, nails, and a spur sometimes. Then I read that some have more toes than others. Hmm, that made me look at my chickens.
All mine have three front toes and one in back, but then I realized they were lots of different colors.
I figured they’d mostly have gray legs, but that was not at all true. However, the black and gray hens do have gray legs. Too bad I never got any good photos of those hens’ feet.
The pinkish lets are pretty common. Fancy Pants and Hedley’s are pink.
Pink-legged Hedley is our white egg layer. 
Here’s a group shot, where you can see a gray hen’s butt and trust me that the white hen has pink legs.
Yellow legs come in a variety of colors. I found it interesting that the two Welsummers have different shades of yellow in their legs. By the way, I have good news that Buttercup is walking almost normally now, so I think she’s gonna make it and be able to join the flock in a few weeks, along with Butternut! I wonder if her legs are pale because she’s not as robust? Henley, the Ancona who didn’t make it, had a very pale comb her whole life, compared to Hedley.
Buttercup with bright yellow legs 
Butternut, on the left, has pale yellow legs.
And finally, I guess red chickens can have red legs, because Clarence’s legs have a lot of red in them. They are also HUGE compared to the other chickens. He’s a big brute.
Reddish feet. 
You can see his spurs. Ugh.
So, next time you see a chicken, see if it has healthy and bright feet or pale sickly ones. And if you see a guinea fowl, they might have mixed feet like Gertie:
This leads me (awkwardly) to all the debris around the ranch right now. All the chicken mating activity means there are feathers everywhere. It’s not a gentle activity! But, not all that flutters in the wind around the area is chicken feathers.
It’s once again Alfred shedding season. Or maybe it always is. But, his coat is all clumpy and puffy, and the dog hair balls rolling through the house are even more numerous than usual (yes, we clean them up; they come back). Yesterday, though, he was in one of his extra loving moods and kept following me around wanting to be petted. And he let me do this!
He let me get hair from his hips, his neck, his chest, and EVEN his belly. He rolled over and let me pluck! Usually you get about two minutes’ worth of plucking before he goes away, but last night he was great and stuck around until I was tired! He let me hug him and tell him he was a good boy.
There, that nonsense distracted me a little. More later.
The Hermits' Rest 