A summer trip to a dude ranch in Wyoming with daughters Sofia Grace, 9, and Georgia Grace, 7 ½, taught Felicity Huffman a valuable lesson in karma — and mother nature! The vacation started out innocently enough; Each girl was enjoying their own personal pony for the week, and mother and daughters took a ride to the top of a mountain.

“My kids are not scared,” the 46-year-old Desperate Housewives actress recalls. “They’re like, ‘Woohoo!’ They’re singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ and I’m going, ‘Hold on!‘” At the peak, Felicity, Sofia and Georgia had lunch before descending into a cave.

“There’s a legend, as you go in and come out there are these cool crystals, but you’re not supposed to take them because the cave gets mad,” she explains. “Of course I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah…but the crystals are cool, and I want them for the kids.” Felicity soon learned why the legend exists, however!

“So I was shoving crystals in my pockets, and sure enough as I got close to the edge, I stood up, hit my head, and blood is coming down. My friend comes over and is like, ‘Are you okay?’ I said ‘Yeah, take the crystals.’ And then she hit her head, and blood was coming out.”

Back at home things have been decidedly less dramatic for the girls, who recently welcomed several chickens into their family. “They’re all named,” Felicity shares, “and my kids are just crazy about them.” Especially, it seems, is Georgia — who Felicity has nicknamed “the chicken whisperer.”

“She takes big baskets and puts my expensive towels in there, and takes a chicken and puts it in. And then she decides that the chicken needs a friend so now there’s two chickens in the basket, and then she covers them over with another really expensive towel, and … they go to sleep! So we have baskets of chickens all over the house sleeping.”

So attached is Georgia, she even sleeps alongside her new feathered friends. “The other night I went in to say goodnight, and as I was walking out the door I said ‘Is there a chicken in here?’ And she said, ‘There’s a few under my bed,’” Felicity joked.

Sofia and Georgia are Felicity’s children with husband William H. Macy.