Best Roost Ever?

With both Michigan and Michigan State playing this evening in the Sweet Sixteen, even our chickens seem to be getting into the spirit of March Madness. Check out the place one of our Buff Orpington hens decided to roost for the night:

Yes, it helps that we have hay bales stacked up to within a couple of feet of the rim. But this is still the first time I've seen a chicken actually roost on the hoop.

The basketball hoop is in the cavernous upstairs part of the barn, and in the summer (when there's less hay blocking it), our kids enjoy shooting baskets. It's like having a huge gymnasium to run around in.

Most of our poultry lives in the downstairs part of the barn, which has a much lower ceiling and tends to stay significantly warmer. For whatever reason, though, we always seem to have a few rogue birds which insist on finding a way upstairs. Once there, those birds are extremely difficult to extract. At night, they find crazy-high places like this (and the rafters) to roost. During the day, they usually see us coming and scramble way up out of reach on top of the hay.

We'll catch her someday. She's way overdue for the soup pot, and I think she knows it. Chickens may be dumb, but they're not stupid.