Fort Knox chicken coop... and tired mothers

I should not have collected chicken eggs from the coop last night. I knew I was dragging butt and needed to go to bed. I had a long, intensely busy day with tight deadlines at the office and then spent my early evening serving as a taxi service to the kids' classes. But Fino was off to a class himself and the girls have been a little nervous about going outside at night after our fisher incident last week so I took the flashlight and basket and headed to the coop.

And then the final straw dropped on the camel's back. I locked myself in the coop with no easy way to get out.

Let me just say that a tired brain is a STUPID brain.

I'll let my photos tell the story.

The lock that closed behind me as I entered coop.

The long L-shaped ruler found in the coop and fit between the doors did not have the correct angle to move the lock.







So I climbed through the hole between the two sections of the coop and tried to exit via the other side.

Then I remembered I locked both doors on that side of the coop already and it would have be even harder to get through those locks from the inside.

Lock #1

Lock #2 is a screen door that closes over lock #1.











So back through the little hole for a new plan.

All the while I am well aware the girls will not be missing me. They were watching a video when I walked outside and are tuned out to everything else around them when it's movie time. And I'm not in the habit of bringing my cell phone to collect eggs so I couldn't alert them to my dilemma.

So I walked around in circles for a couple of minutes trying to think. That's when I noticed the big door. It had rotating screw tabs to pull out the window insert.

Note G. outside the door to ensure I don’t have a repeat performance while taking pictures after the fact.

And even though there are tools like shovels and rakes in the shed, there are no hand tools like screwdrivers, wrenches or pliers of any kind.

But I did uncover this handy item.

And I used it to push the tabs of the window insert, which was not so easy but it did get the job done.

I was only locked in the coop for about 15-20 minutes but when I walked back in to the house - to find the girls still glued to their video - I asked them if they missed me.

"What are you talking about?" G. asked.

I told them about being locked in the coop and L. said, "Mom, why didn’t you just climb out the window?"

Huh?

"I'll show you," she told with a big grin on her face.

The screen-less window behind the tools would have been an easy escape (I got through a smaller door on the floor between the coop sections after all).

But clearly this was my lesson to learn to listen to my body (and brain) when I'm tired. I should simply go to bed when I know I'm spent because that "one quick last thing?" It might not turn out to be quite so quick.