Wherein Martin is Younger than His Years Show, and I Need Chicken Names

The girls rode bikes to school this morning and now it rains cats and dogs!  We'll see if the deluge is still so strong this afternoon; if so, it should be a rather wet ride back.  Fall has truly arrived.  During walks, Beatrix scoops red and green maple leaves into my hands.  The gnarled apple trees in Austerbruin Park litter the grass with soft, mushy apples (some red, some hard and green; some tart and tasty, others horrid-tasting); my plum-picking basket sits outside on a chair, soaked with rain.  I've been remiss, I'm afraid, about gathering the last of the plums; after bushels-full, I lost my oomph.  There are only so many prune-plums you can eat, no matter how sweet, before your stomach begs why and finally revolts.  ("Why didn't you stop me?"  asked Luke, after his sixth plum and the consequences that followed).  Too late.  The orange flesh of a ripe plum, paired with the tart skin, is irresistible to the uninitiated.

To bypass the sour effects of mass-consumption, I've been making plum-butter and plum-apple-butter, plum jam and plum-blackberry jam. . .delicious, let me tell you.  Absolutely wonderful, and we're all getting fatter on the vehicles of fresh jam--toast and scones and pancakes.  The apples will finally be ready soon, and the basil is shooting to seed, begging me to make pesto.

Newsflash 1:
In other news, a woman who identified herself as campus police stopped Martin and Merry this morning on their brief walk to school.  "Where are you going?"  she asked Martin, looking him over suspiciously.

"We're walking to school," Martin clarified, as though that were not apparent.  He indicated Merry.  "I am her father."

Martin waved her into the building and started for home.  The woman caught him on his way back.  "Frankly," she said, "You don't look old enough to be her father."

At least nobody offered him Halloween candy last year, mistaking him for a trick-or-treater.  Thirty-seven and freshly shaven, Martin still looks more like nineteen.

Newsflash 2:
Nobody ever questions me as I arrive at school with the girls, though Bea's kindergarten teacher looked at me in shock when I ran around the corner (almost late again), pushing my bike, Charley's leash looped around my wrist.  Now that I know Charley can run next to my bike (a far preferable solution to ferrying him around in the little yellow kid-trailer), I don't hesitate to take him along on bike pick-ups.

Nobody would guess that the sweet little kindergartner in her bike helmet and oversized backpack, chatting up a storm on the way home, is the same girl who, last night in a flash of Mr. Hyde, inflicted an angry scratch on her sister's face.  She lost dessert for the week and cried bitterly in repentance, and I hoped that the scratch that was already rising, red and angry, half-circling Elspeth's right eye, would look less bright this morning.  But it didn't.  Elspeth stared in the mirror and moaned,  "I look terrible."

She did, indeed, look as though she'd been scratched by an agitated and wicked cat.  As I told Bea, if a cat had scratched Elspeth like that, we'd have made other arrangements for its living; as Bea is our daughter, we will keep her and forgive her but she must NEVER do anything like that again.  Bea, much like the girl with the little curl in the middle of her forehead, is showing flashes of rather volatile temper, and though Elspeth is never an innocent party (at the moment of her scratch, she was manhandling Bea yet again), nobody deserves to be scratched.  Which just goes to show that three little girls, fathered by a mere teenager, are a challenging handful.  But we already knew that.

Newsflash 3:
I am toiling away on a few stories at the moment, fighting tooth and nail (not unlike my daughters) for every sentence.  Such is the price of returning to work after taking a long, undisciplined holiday.

Here is where I need your help:  please give me whimsical names for chickens.  I reached that part in my story and road-blocked.  I came up with Madame Clucky.  That's it.  Pathetic!  I know you can do better.  SOS.  Funny chicken names.  Please leave in comments!  (This may or may not make a difference: the name is for a Plymouth Rock chicken, which boasts beautiful white and black feathers).