Some people go see movies in a theater. We prefer to see musicians perform live. I bagged tickets to see BoDeans and Al Stewart later this Spring at a venue that is small, cozy, and wonderful. We’ve seen them both before, more than once. Kurt Neumann did a post-concert meet-and-greet, and posed for a pic with me. Al signed two posters last time, and the time before that, signed a CD cover insert. Both guys are very nice in person. Got a front and center table for two for Al, which is even better than the front row table we got for Edgar Winter. Didn’t have any such luck for BoDeans, but still got a table close to the stage.
The only thing that rather ticks me off about getting tickets at this venue is that every time I do it, they have a different booking system. Used to be like making dinner reservations; book the tickets, pay, show up, and they’d cross your name off the list upon entry. This time around, I had to pay for the tickets to the two events as separate transactions, and had a choice between printing them out at my end, or showing the door attendant a smartphone equivalent. ‘Scuse me. I printed out hard copies. Their old system worked just fine, so I don’t understand how they got suckered into using a third party for this. Besides, some of us refuse to get smartphones, for several reasons.
Tacking to a completely different subject, it seems the neighbors’ chickens don’t like the seed mix I bought from TSC as much as they did the old mix. The chickadees, wrens, finches, juncos, and sparrows don’t care, and are all over the Duncraft feeder, but the chickens came running over when they saw me, and were all “Dafuq is this stuff? We’ll eat it, but the old stuff was better.” Foghorn and Red, the roosters, were sort of “make way, girls, we’ll eat it,” but the hens were a bit more reluctant. The rhodie hens dove in after the two ameraucanas (Goldilocks and Gray, as I call them) started chowing down on it. Tossing out half a cup of bird seed for that baker’s dozen flock is a mere supplement to their free range foraging diet.
I’ve never tried to pick up one of the hens, but they do let me brush off whatever seed I tossed that landed on their back feathers without anything more than a momentary flinch. I’m not the one who raised them from chicks, to pullets, to hens, so flinching is normal. They don’t even bother trying to peck me. If they didn’t like me, they’d hide under the spruces, rather than running over to flock around me. I had to shoo the two ameraucanas into the bushes a few weeks ago, when a redtail hawk flew overhead; the roosters corraled the rest of them under the spruces. Apparently, chickens have pretty good eyesight. In any event, they recognize me as a friendly human.
the hawk and chicken thing reminds me of a story my grandma liked to tell of her mom trying to scare off some critter (I don’t remember if it was a fox or coyote) that was threatening their chickens by shooting a shotgun into the sky, and by sheer accident shot and killed a redtailed hawk.
Oops. Coyotes come out at all hours, but foxes aren’t normally seen during daylight. That said, I have seen foxes in our backyard during daylight hours. It’s unusual, but it happens. Usually, letting out a wolf howl is enough to drive off the land predators.