Little Liza Update

Who knew that chickens can actually puke? I would expect a chicken to maybe cough something up occasionally, but really vomit? Like a person? I now know that they can and do, because I was just thrown up on by a chicken when I was spraying her poopy chicken butt and scrubbing her botto with Dawn dish soap...as seen on TV- you know sea life covered with oil slick. Well the long and short of it is that although my vet said that this chicken would probably not make it through last night, she did, so I really pumped up the nutrient dense cat food the vet gave me, and probably gave her too much water as well. In retrospect, I think it might not have been a good idea to plop her into the sink right after she ate. I actually acted this out for Jim because what happened was she set herself up to upchuck just like a person does, (except with no hands to hold her belly,)  gagged a couple of times with her little chicken tongue out, and then absolutely ejected her dinner across my sweatshirt and on to the kitchen counter. (This little charade made Jim shake like Jello - a good one on the Jim laugh-o-meter.) As I stood there with one hand frozen on her dreadful fanny and the other arm outstretched to examine the considerable amount of vomit, the smell hit. And that is what amazed me the most. I'm a science lover, and even as I stood there with chicken feces in my right hand and puke on my left, I marveled that this chicken had just produced the same awful vomit smell that humans make. How can this be? She is a bird. Who would expect this at all? The smell brought back memories of cleaning up after my own sick children when they were little, but mostly you know where this smell takes me? To grade school with the weary janitor coming down the hall with his sullied grey string mop and disinfectant to clean up the kid puke that some other kid just slipped in as they innocently walked down the waxed brown tile. Then of course that kid heaved too.

O.K. so Liza is up, down, all around and I don't know if she will live, but I've given it my best shot. And right now she is lying on a clean white towel, she's Dawn fresh, while I have puky laundry, and my entire downstairs smells like the fourth grader who couldn't handle the corned beef hash. Gosh I hope no one drops in this evening. I don't think even Febreze Pet Odor Eliminator can handle chicken. Where's the janitor when you need him?