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
We did the thing again
Did you know the original cat cafe was in Taiwan? Japanese tourists loved the idea and brought it home. There are now maybe 40 cat cafes in Tokyo and even a dog cafe.
I know all this because Uncle B shouted it to me from the other room.
Bunch of skinny little Romanian street kitties at our local, except the one skinny little ginger who was picked up off the street in Portugal by vacationing Italians.
Call me crazy, but I bet it would be cheaper to rehome cats in their country of origin than to fly them all over the world to be rehomed. Surely we have homegrown feral cats.
This is only the second time we’ve been. First time was in December. We’ve meant to come back ever since, but it’s been awkward finding time when we’re free and the kids are in school. Children take the zen atmosphere of a cat cafe and make it squeal.
Today, it was just us, the staff, a young French couple and 13 sleepy kitties drowsing in the sun. Very relaxing.
June 27, 2024 — 5:53 pm
Comments: 1
Look at that silly little tail
I, too, had a chick called Albert and this morning he tried to kill me again. Look at this goofy-looking little fuzzball and picture it.
He’s still goofy-looking but he grew into a giant, ridiculous, rage-filled monster. Only to me, though. He’s never attacked anyone else. Because I raised him, nature is telling him I’m the final boss and if he defeats me he will be crowned King Chicken. They say there’s nothing more dangerous than a hand-reared bull, for the same reason.
I’ve posted about his spurs before. You may laugh at the idea of a chicken-related injury, but he’s heavy enough and they’re sharp enough to do real damage. He caught me in the soft part of the knee once and crippled me for days.
Yes, I can easily fend him off if I see it coming, but he goes days and days without incident and then wakes up one morning with murder in his heart.
He’s the very last of my polands. I miss those silly bastards and their feathery afros.
June 18, 2024 — 6:52 pm
Comments: 8
Peep!
My new favorite YouTube binge channel is A Chick Called Albert. He’s a Dutch hippie with an animal rescue – ho hum – but his claim to fame is (and this is unheard of) he will take rescue eggs and try to incubate them.
When gamekeepers are instructed to clear out the nests of ground-nesting birds, or poultry keepers or aviaries find abandoned mystery eggs, he’ll take them in and give them a shot. I’d hate to think what his failure rate is, but he does seem to know what he’s doing and his successes are awesome.
Several times, to my horror, he’s helped a chick along at hatching time. Poultry keepers are told never, ever to do this. The very first sign of life in an incubating egg is a robust vascular system – gnarly veins – growing along the inside of the shell (on candling, it’s honestly spooky as hell). These veins are not totally inactive at the time of hatching, and hurrying things along can kill the chick. But, again, he seems to know what he’s doing.
The little peeper in the thumbnail turned out to be a zebra finch. Watching him giving it a first feeding with a pipette and a magnifying glass was something else.
I absolutely adored hatching eggs, which is how I ended up with three roosters and one hen. Never again, I’m afraid. I’ll have to hatch vicariously through my friend Alwyn here. His posts have slowed way down, but his back-catalogue should keep me busy a while.
p.s. If you think it’s a little creepy that the first thing he does is kiss the newly hatched bird, he’s not. He’s warming it up with his breath because he’s taken it from the nice warm incubator into the cold room to examine it.
June 17, 2024 — 7:25 pm
Comments: 7
I hope he has a bellyache
In case it isn’t obvious in my potatophone pic, you’re looking at a bar of soap three-quarters eaten by the nibbling of tiny teeth. Mouse, we think. Uncle B saw one in the area. In which case, this would represent several times his body weight in soap.
He must be pooping Tide pods.
For all we know, this was happening over a long period of time and we only now noticed. It wasn’t the active bar of soap. Worst part: it’s on the shelf with our toothbrushes *grimace*. Not really a place you want to put down poison. Or a trap, for that matter.
Why do they always go for the soap? My family had a hunting cabin in the Appalachians, and we always turned up to find any left-behind bars looking like this.
June 3, 2024 — 7:25 pm
Comments: 7
I can hear the wah wah pedal
I think this is the chicken equivalent of sexy times in the hot tub.
One of these days, Uncle B will remember he shares his Google photos with me. I am thief.
Oh, ew. He’s just sent me a picture of a dragon chicken. Obviously a painful mutation that some sadistic bastard decided to breed.
Ah, yes. Vietnamese mandarins.
May 15, 2024 — 7:34 pm
Comments: 9
I have no computer and I must post
My birfday present was a nice fast SSD to put games on and which we could install ourselves in a flash!
Yeah. No. Computer’s at the shop. Might get it back tomorrow. All my stuff is on it, including the old stuff I’ve been posting. So – hello!
I did play the cat game through during the break. It was beautiful and sweet. And weird. (Fair warning, it hurts the cat a couple of times in unavoidable cut scenes).
Also, I did something I’ve never, ever done. I take a tiny sliver of pride playing games through on normal difficulty, old lady though I be. Not resorting to easy or – god forbid! – story mode. What do I look like, a games journalist?
But I gave up and downloaded a cheat trainer for this. That’s what they call them now – cheat trainers. Kitty has to run through swarms of little parasitic creatures and I got sick of hearing him get jumped, scream and die.
Insult to injury, I watched other people play through on YouTube and they had no problem zig-zagging and avoiding trouble. I suck under pressure.
Now, to top it off, I miss the little cat and feel really sad about it. Stupid monkeybrain. Nothing for it but to play through again. When I get my computer back.
May 13, 2024 — 7:33 pm
Comments: 7
Mugged by a lamb
We had to help our neighbor fix her wifi, a trip that included a drive across a sheep field.
This one little lamb was in the near end by himself. His mother was some yards away not paying attention and the rest of the flock was way down the far end. He came bounding up to the car like it was the most awesome thing he’d ever seen in his life. It probably was, but lambs are usually shy wee beasties.
I got out to shoo him away and he walked me backwards around the car shouting “MEHHHHH!” in my face like he had to tell me something RIGHT NOW. It was honestly adorable. Weird but adorable.
Sooner or later, though, we had to go home and I had to run him off. Pictured above. Excuse quality; it was dusk.
Happy Good Friday. I’ve got three more days of this!
March 29, 2024 — 7:12 pm
Comments: 3