Not a joke. My once gorgeous succulent, "won" at a church bazaar about 5 years ago, only after dumping about $10 worth of quarters on various numbers just before the number wheel was spun, is now in jeopardy.

Its attempted murderer is a tough-as-nails free-range hen, I call Mama. She's the lone survivor of about ten chickens and roosters brought and released here a few years ago, after being captured from a property set for salvage, then demolition. She roosts at night in the trees. She scares the hell out of the countryhood dogs and cats. Her only predators are hawks, owls, and coyotes. Maybe snakes too, but something tells me she'd kick some snake ass too.

I feed her chicken scratch on a table/workbench on my porch. I have to feed her up there because both the neighbor's dog and mine will eat it (weird creatures!). She competes for the scratch with squirrels and apparently rats, which I've seen scurrying off at night if I need to go outside.

I also have four plants on the table. She leaves the yucka alone - who says chickens are dumb? However, she flies up into my succulent if she's out of food. Yesterday, I was on the porch when she came running up, but had to go inside to get her a scoop of food. When I returned seconds later, bitch she was standing in my plant pot!

Today, I found this:

She's stripped most of the leaves off this once gorgeous plant, and it's beginning to piss me off.

I only have one window in the front of the house I could put the plant in, and it belongs to Annie (aka Nanny Nanny Bo Banny) and Nip (aka Nipples) the dog and cat I am enslaved to. Plus, I nearly killed the defenseless plant one winter - the winter I actually did kill poor Basil - because there's just not enough sunlight in my old farmhouse.

I need some suggestions. I thought about putting some sort of metal spike things into the pot. That keeps the cats out of the plants at my mom's house. Mama's too smart to actually hurt herself I think. Any other suggestions?