The first step in preparing your soldiers for battle is teaching them where the food and water is cuz let's face it - they're chickens.  They aren't very bright.  The second step is teaching them how to bathe.  Like most living creatures, spiders can smell.  It's kinda fucked up that they smell with their legs; it's probably how they found me - bastards have eight frigging noses!

Anyhoo, so that the enemy can't smell the army coming, it's important that the soldiers bathe.  Teaching them to do that was no simple feat.  Since my soldiers are young and without their biological mother, it's up to me to show them how to take a dirt bath.  Why a dirt bath?  Well, it serves two purposes, both of which align with my goal of having a stealthy, healthy army.  One, it helps them get rid of parasites they might have hitching a ride inside their feathers.  Healthy soldiers are fighting machines.  The second reason for the dirt bath is it covers their scent, allowing them to blend into their environment making them invisible to predators and prey.  If the spiders can't smell my soldiers, they won't know what hit them - kinda like I felt when the Spider King enlisted the aid of the Mice Army last December.

Asshat.

So!  I set out to gather what I needed to provide for my soldiers' hygiene and training.  Unfortunately it had been pretty damp Jeremy and I couldn't get the loose, dry dirt I needed.  So I used sand - which wasn't bad the sand provides grit for the soldiers (grit is necessary for a chicken's food digestion), so I was thinking, "Bonus!"

With sand in the tray I placed in their pen, I fiddled with the granules and powder to get their attention.  Once I got that, I ran my hand through the and, shaking it slightly.

...and promptly scared the chicks away.  I was very disappointed in my young soldiers.  I knew I was definitely going to have to work on their fear factor.  I had seen full grown chickens grab a garter snake and run through the chicken yard as if they had just won the trophy to end all trophies - my young soldiers were not giving me much hope.  Especially given the fact that the slur of calling someone a chicken was the same as calling them a coward.


No matter!  They'll be spider killing machines in time.

Anyhoo.  I withdrew my hand and waited for the chicks to come back to the tray.  Cautiously they approached, tilting their heads side to side to see better.  I held my breath as they drew closer as a unit - cohesion of the group is important in warfare.  The littlest soldier cheeped an inquiry to the biggest soldier, who responded with a decisive peck at the tray - had she been full grown, she would have broken it.

"Good."  I totally thought that in Emperor Palpatine's voice from Return of the Jedi.  "Feel the anger.  Kill it.  Murder that spider's face."


...Oh my God, what have I become?


Anyhoo, the sand idea was a huge bust.  The chicks wound up scratching at it and using it as grit.  Again, not a big deal because grit is necessary, but seeing them itch themselves and seeing downy tufts trying to escape the new feathers growing in, I felt bad for the chicks.

Now according to the interwebs, I should just use diatomaceous earth or potting soil.  The same interwebs also said a chicken only needs 4 square feet of space in a coop or run, which is most DEFINITELY NOT enough room for a full grown soldiers....I mean, chickens.  So I'm ignoring the interwebs because most of those people have no clue what they're talking about.  Besides, diatomaceous earth isn't something I can run to the corner store to get; and I really don't trust ordering things like that from Amazon - who knows what I'm getting.  I decided to wait out the piddly rains we had gotten and harvest some dirt from the yard.  In the mean time, I decided to move the barracks - the soldiers weren't getting enough shade during the afternoon.

Boy, am I glad I did!  Look at those happy soldiers! 

I let them be - they knew what they needed to do to clean themselves.  "Him" came home to find me videoing the soldiers.

*Him: How they doin'?"
*Me, all smiles: They're loving their dirt.  Makes me glad I moved the coop.
*Him, eyeballing my dirty jeans: What?  You had to show them how to roll in the dirt?
*Me: No.  There needs to be a clear line between command and the troops.

"Him's" expression was that of questioning my sanity.  He muttered something with a shake of his head.  I'm fairly certain he said something to the effect of "What am I getting myself into?"

He'll change his tune in eight weeks.  He hates spiders as much as I do.