Sad stories
My first two chickens. The one on the right died at three and the one on the left lived to be eight and was never the same. Never made another friend, fed alone. Although, to be fair, she was always a little crazy.
Across the threshold this afternoon came this article from Backyard Chickens – “Do Poultry Mourn Over The Loss Of A Flock Mate?” It’s full of sad stories.
On second thought, don’t read it. It’s sad.
p.s. chickens are another thing that doesn’t work in black and white. You really need to see that red comb to figure out what the heck you’re looking at.
March 13, 2025 — 8:06 pm
Comments: 4
Uncle B liked it, anyway
This photo won the Natural History Museum’s 2024 Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award. It was taken in an urban setting not that far from here. Do hit the link – there are some wonderful photos there.
There is a darker side to this image. I live in rural Dorset where I’m on a rewilding mission to enhance habitats for a huge array of wildlife. The badger cull – which is still ongoing – has decimated their numbers and I fear that unless the cull is stopped, we’ll only see badgers in urban settings in several parts of England. My hope is for this image to raise awareness of the damaging effect of the badger cull and help push for change.” – Ian Wood, winner of this year’s People’s Choice Award.
That’s the photographer, Ian Wood. While I agree the cull is disgraceful (they’re trying to murder their way out of bovine tuberculosis), I don’t know why anyone would want badgers in the city. They’re a menace to traffic and awfully destructive.
If you scroll down the BBC article on the topic, you might just spot a Belgian ermine.
p.s. don’t get me started on Banksy.
February 5, 2025 — 5:41 pm
Comments: 5
Lucky little newt
Look at the adorable smooth newt that Uncle B found SWIMMING IN THE DOWNSTAIRS TOILET. I may never poop again.
Yes, he rescued it.
Speaking of slimy things: Adobe. I posted a rave review of Photoshop Elements some time ago, which has damn near all the functionality of my full Photoshop but only costs, like, £70. I went to buy a copy for new machine, and noticed in the fine print it now says “3 year license.”
So I looked it up. Yup. After three years, the program stops working and you have to pony up again. They started this in 2025 and, because everything is delivered digitally now, you simply cannot buy an older version.
Anyway, I may have a workaround. I bought the 2024 version for work and it’s a one person, two seat license. If I can find the serial number.
Wot bastards.
February 4, 2025 — 7:50 pm
Comments: 8
Boo!
I threw a sheet over the two chairs we inherited to keep the cat (pictured) from scratching the upholstery. It didn’t work, naturally.
It’s not the first time I’ve had this thought, but I know – from reading Victorian novels – that rich English people who had more than one home would put sheets over the furniture in the off season. I’m as sure as sure can be that this is where the popular conception of a ghost looking like something under a sheet with two arms raised in the air comes from: armchairs under sheets. Or grandfather clocks or birdcages. Either drafts blowing the sheets around or dark rooms giving the illusion of movement.
It’s too perfect.
October 9, 2024 — 6:27 pm
Comments: 5
I are a criminal
You may recollect me bitching and moaning about one of my main Gmail accounts running out of storage. Google keeps sending me nastygrams about it. I deleted and deleted and it didn’t seem to make a substantial difference. Tonight I discovered one video that was using up ten of my fifteen gigs.
It was a lecture by my boss. Saved to my hard drive.
I have now sent two different addresses to the chicken registry six different times and still haven’t got the confirmation email I need to start the registration process. That means as of today, me and my flock are officially outlaws. The speculation is that thousands of people are registering their supermarket chickens and it knocked the website out.
Very funny guys, but I’ll be pissed if I go to jail for poultry crime.
I don’t have any way to prove I tried to register. I’d ask you all to be my witnesses, but I’d have to send authorities to my blog. I don’t think that’s a very good idea.
If you know where I can get the best information about the flooding in Appalachia, I’d appreciate. East Tennessee and Western North Carolina is where I was born and mostly grew up and I’d like to see the damage. I’ve tried Facebook, but I’m not following anyone from the area any more. It’s been a long time!
October 1, 2024 — 5:33 pm
Comments: 5
Oh! Oh! I know this one!
You can read the article if you want (graphic is theirs), but the answer is yes. The ‘official’ answer used to be no, but one of my chickens farted once so I knew better.
Then I got wondering whether that was an AI generated image. See how the thigh is in front but the foot lands behind the foot on the other leg? That’s a tell. I have now spent a stupid amount of time trying to get an illustration similar to that out of free AI art generators.
I can tell you “chicken farting” absolutely won’t do it. It resolutely gave me steaming chicken dinners. “Living chicken with feathers farting” was the first prompt that gave me a non-cooked chickens, but no farting. “Living chicken with feathers and smoke coming out of its bottom” got closer, but the smoke came out of everything BUT its bottom. Farting must be on the no-no list.
Nothing blew up today. I was so bummed about this – I’ll be honest with you, if I knew the password to my blog, I’d’ve posted a bored one-liner from my phone rather than bother to boot my computer. Unfortunately, I got paranoid one day and set my password to one of those crypto-approved things like ?~3lkjh4,+_qqola
September 19, 2024 — 7:02 pm
Comments: 11
Not today.
The bee man came this morning. I was at work, but Uncle B tells me he could, as we say where I come from, talk the hind leg off a dog.
The object in the image is some kind of…bee fascinator. It’s a bright yellow box apparently full of herbs and, I dunno, magic ingredients guaranteed to attract bees. He swears if he unleashes this in the attic, it will fill with bees and he can seal it and take them away.
The problem is, he could’t find the hive. He still has to find and trap the queen and that’s where she’ll be. I guess he was too old a dude to go up into the attic and look around for himself, so he’s coming back with a younger dude.
Happy Lammas, peeps.
August 1, 2024 — 6:47 pm
Comments: 9
What a weird day
Joe Biden has been on deathwatch all day. Moments ago, an apparently fresh video of him surfaced, so he ain’t already dead after all. He was pretty feeble though.
I believe in Uncle Al’s theory – Joe is so ding-dang mad that they de-nominated him without permission that he can’t be trusted in front of a microphone until he simmers down.
Then Jimmy Carter was dead. Then Jimmy Carter was not dead. I admit, I was taken in by the fake death notice. Ain’t nobody reading all of that (and nobody did).
Real talk, though – he’s 99 and some days he doesn’t wake up all day.
More important than all that, Albert the cockerel isn’t doing well. He spent the day standing in the corner of his cage with his head down. He is not a young chicken, and the last of my Polands, which (when they weren’t disappeared by something in the hedge) had a tendency to wilt and die suddenly.
By this evening, he’d rallied enough to get up on the perch for the night. I’ll keep you posted.
Finally, Gromulin won the Dead Pool with Lou Dobbs. So there’s that. You know what that means.
July 23, 2024 — 7:10 pm
Comments: 8
Any beekeepers in the house?
The bees of Badger House are angry.
We’ve been coexisting with them happily for years, but a stupidly aggressive bee went after both of us while we were just standing in the garden last week and eventually it (or another one) stung Uncle B on the arm. Nasty one, too.
Today, I was quietly weeding the paving around the house when two bees, ten minutes apart, got right in my face. So much so that they both got caught in my hair. I know it was two separate bees because I was wearing gardening gloves and so was able to snatch them out of my hair and crush them to death.
I know bees in a fight will emit an alarm pheromone, so maybe the first one was chance and the second one was a reaction to the first one. Then there was a third, which caused me to move to another part of a garden. And a fourth (or maybe the third a second time). At that point, I gave up and went in.
Pity. We aren’t getting a lot of sunny afternoons this year.
We have to have the chimney repointed soon, so the bees will have to go. It cuts across my instincts, but if they’re acting this way, perhaps it’s for the best.
Picture is my girl Spoon the day she decided to fly up the roof. I suspect they had a poke at her, because she came down again sharpish. That chicken was more trouble than the whole rest of the flock put together and I miss her terribly.
July 11, 2024 — 7:05 pm
Comments: 5
Long gone
Still settling down to my new phone (spoiler: I like it). The is the very oldest picture on my camera roll: Charlotte in the snows of Rhode Island, 2005.
I hate Mondays. I mean, because Mondays. Duh.
Monday is also the day I clean the stovetop.
And boil down the chicken carcass from Sunday dinner. I hate this process. It smells, it’s slow and unpleasant – but it gives me two to four really great lunches in the week.
Inevitably, when the meat has cooled and I’m picking it off the bone, my chickens will come stand outside the kitchen window and peck around happily. They’re drawn to the window because they see me there and they’re hoping for a treat, but it makes me feel like the biggest of shits.
The cows used to do this on the little farm I grew up on. We’d be sitting there eating beef and they’d gather outside the dining room window eating hay. Only in this case, we really didn’t need to put cattle feed outside the dining room window. Honestly, Mother.
p.s. I know what you’re thinking. “She only cleans the stovetop once a week? Ewwwwww!“
July 1, 2024 — 6:53 pm
Comments: 6