My husband, a developmental biologist, once worked at the Integral Urban House in Berkeley, CA, an experiment in ecological urban living that included a chicken coop. One day he came home and in his precise, scientific way announced, "One of the hens gave birth to a chicken puppy."

Re: Poop Deck--Chanteyranger once swore (and he sounded serious--a rare event) that it's called that because that's what they really used it for, back in the dim and distant past, trusting the boarding seas to wash it clean. He said it was true, but it still sounds like a pile of you-know-what to me.