Silkie status

The Silkies are dirty today.  Yesterday I went through the whole flock and vaselined everyone's feet (setting off a rash of feather adjustment).  Then the Colonel climbed on everyone he could, greasing up their other feathers with his feet, and it was a hot, dust bathing afternoon, so now all the white Silkies are looking very grimy.Brown Bonnet is going broody.  She threw a giant fit at being removed from the covered wagon at nighttime last night, and after a kamikaze plunge through the fence, got her way.  She is also huge.  She's twice the size of most of the other Silkies, almost as heavy as the Colonel, or a normal layer hen.  Every time I lift them in or out of the coop, there's Brown Bonnet, and a whoa! moment.  Big blimp.  She'll be able to cover a lot of eggs.Inside, Apples the house chicken continues to be no trouble at all, happy to stay in her box or on her sheet-of-newspaper "yard", even though nothing is actually keeping her from rampaging all over the house.  She hasn't taken that into her head, luckily (she only jumps out a couple times a week, and HW announces "there's an exploratory chicken down here!").  She's also growing, maybe twice the size as she first came in.  She quickly got over being cuddling or held, protesting at even being pet (which is hard to resist trying because she's cute and soft, like they all are).  Hey!  Don't touch me; I'm a wild animal!  I'm a chicken!  Have some respect!It's nice to have a little life form in the house, even though we are really very much surrounded with many many life forms, we don't really need them in the house too.  But it's still fun to have company.  Today she has an extra thick bed of hay in her box, so she's riding rather high and has a good view.  Yesterday she was all about scratching.I spoke too soon about her good behaviour.  Today was an out-of-the-box day, and I got a helper chicken suddenly flapping over the edge of her box..  She landed in the middle of floor then made her way over to me where I was slinging dirt, repotting to give all the tiny tomato shoots their own cells.  I also had some seed packets strewn about, and these interested her.   It's just like having a cat in your business, except it's a shy chicken.After her big outing to the world four feet away, she ate and ate and then napped for the rest of the afternoon.HW was watching a movie about a little girl with a pet chicken.  She was always carrying her chicken around, hanging out (where did they get this stunt chicken?).  Then as she spent more and more of the movie wearing rubber boots with her pajamas, he deadpanned "She's getting more like you all the time"."She's a free range chicken today"