Fox watch
They look such little angels when they sleep, don’t they? I did try to find the owner of this image. I got 13 pages of hits on Tineye.
My next door neighbor did send me a phone pic of the actual fox, but it was an unreadable blur and now I can’t even find it. I don’t know which benighted app she used to send it to me.
Yes, fox. Two, in fact. In broad daylight. Canoodling.
Well, I don’t mind the canoodling so much. It’s the attempting to eat my chickens part I object to. Uncle B chased them out of our garden, then we heard reports up and down the neighborhood as two amorous foxes had appeared in back gardens.
Three. We got three reports. We’re rural.
This puts pressure on my housing situation. A certain amount of free ranging is necessary for me to cope with four adult roosters (swapping them in and out as necessary).
I’m going to try to give away one of my boys 🙁
January 10, 2022 — 8:02 pm
Comments: 5
The mirror
Oh, they know what they’re looking at. I mean, they couldn’t describe it to you in words of one syllable, but they are both intrigued and unafraid.
Rosie and Jenny as six-week-old mille fleur bantams. Rosie vanished one day, presumably taken by the fox. I heard a bark, but the other chickens didn’t react, so it was a sneaky one.
Jenny grew up to be a wonderful great fat mille fleur archetype and the mother of Sam, Mo and Millie. Not their biological mother, but she sat the eggs and raised them.
An even sneakier fox got her. He head-butted his way into the nest box and ate her right off the perch. I ran out to find him trapped in the chicken run. I opted to let him go to save the other chicken trapped inside.
What was I going to do, beat him to death with a banjo?
December 30, 2021 — 7:59 pm
Comments: 9
But what does it mean?
There’s something about images with multiple chickens that seems to have a deeper meaning. Like a poultry I Ching.
After the divine Lucia (pbuh) fell off the perch at the untimely age of three, these three chooks were my whole flock for a long time. In the evening, when I went to shut them in, I’d open the door and look them over on the perch.
They were facing toward or away from me in one of the following sequences:
beak-beak-butt
beak-butt-butt
beak-butt-beak
butt-beak-butt
butt-butt-beak
beak-beak-beak
butt-butt-butt
I feel sure if I were wise enough, I could tell my fortune by this. The only constant was, everyone slept scooched away from Violence. She was a sleep-pecker.
December 29, 2021 — 6:29 pm
Comments: 6
A four-pack of greedy beaks
Here we see the chicken’s natural love of spaghetti. I think they think it’s worms.
This right here is illegal in the UK, by the way. Feeding people food to chickens, even pet chickens. This picture was taken in 2013, before the decree, though. Please not to be arresting me.
So, we have a Dead Pool winner already! Congrats, armybrat. Did you notice, by the way, that we had a pandemic and it didn’t affect the frequency Dead Pool winners at all?
December 27, 2021 — 4:31 pm
Comments: 9
Luciaaaaa, I’ll never stop saying Lucia
Sung to the tune of “Maria” naturally.
Lucia was a shy bird when she was little, but all that changed when she hit puberty. And how. She grew into a regal and imperious bird.
I watched Uncle B try to shoo her off the pea patch once. She reared up and looked down her beak at him as if to say, “young man, do you know I who am?”
All the mille fleurs I’ve have been blowsy and bossy. If I had to stick to one type of chicken, it would be a mille fleur pekin bantam.
Funny, I have very few decent pictures of her. She’s always out of focus or behind another bird or walking away from the camera. I think she was too awesome to capture on film.
By the way, they remake of West Side Story was released and I heard it was surprisingly good. I heard that from some randoes on Twitter, though.
I’m assuming the plural of “rando” is “randoes”.
December 22, 2021 — 8:08 pm
Comments: 5
The saga of Jorts the cat
I linked to this in the previous thread, but it might be slightly easier to read in text. This is a Reddit thread in the AITA (Am I the Asshole?) subreddit. It’s long, but funny. Well, I found it funny.
AITA for “perpetuating ethnic stereotypes” about Jorts?
THE STORY We have two workplace cats in one area of our worksite. They add value to the worksite, we all love the cats and the worksite cat presence is not the issue. One of the cats (Jean) is a tortoiseshell cat we have had for years. The other cat (Jorts) is a large orange cat and a recent addition.
Jorts is just… kind of a simple guy. For example, Jorts can’t open a door even when it’s ajar— he shoves it whether he is going in or out, so often he closes the door he is trying to go through. This means he is often trapped inside the place he was trying to exit and meows until he is rescued.
My colleague Pam (not her real name) has been spending a lot of time trying to teach Jorts things. The doors thing is the main example — it’s a real issue because the cats are fed in a closet and Jorts keeps pushing the door closed. Jean can actually open all the other interior doors since they are a lever type knob, but she can’t open this particular door if she is trapped INSIDE the closet.
Tortie Jean is very nice to poor orange Jorts, and she is kept busy letting him out of rooms he has trapped himself in, so this seems easy to resolve. I put down a door stop.
Pam then said I was depriving Jorts of the “chance to learn” and kept removing the doorstop. She set up a series of special learning activities for Jorts, and tried to put these tasks on the whiteboard of daily team tasks (I erased them). She thinks we need to teach him how to clean himself better and how to get out of minor barriers like when he gets a cup stuck on his head, etc. I love Jorts but he’s just dumb af and we can’t change that.
Don’t get me wrong— watching her try to teach Jorts how to walk through a door is hilarious, but Jean got locked in the closet twice last week. Yesterday I installed a cat cutout thing in the door and Pam started getting really huffy. I made a gentle joke about “you can’t expect Jean’s tortoiseshell smarts from orange cat Jorts” which made Pam FURIOUS. She started crying and left the hallway, then sent an email to the group (including volunteers) and went home early.
In her email Pam said I was “perpetuating ethnic stereotypes by saying orange cats are dumb” and is demanding a racial sensitivity training before she will return. I don’t think it’s relevant but just in case, Pam is a white person in a mostly minority staff (and no she is not ginger/does not have red hair).
TL;DR: AITA for ‘enforcing an ethnic stereotype’ by joking that orange cats are often dumb?
And the follow-up
Thanks for responding to my query which had truly upset me. I work to have a good relationship with my team and the situation had gotten weird so gradually that I lost perspective.
I just met with HR, she had already met with Pam. HR was concerned about Pam’s comparing ethnic stereotypes with giving a cat a doorstop and they addressed that which went well. HR will follow up to make sure Pam understands. (The replies to my query were helpful to me for this discussion.)
HR also addressed Pam assigning other staff Jorts-related tutoring, as it is not appropriate for Pam to assign others work. This also went well.
We both think Pam had a hard time with the transition from volunteer to staff, and may have “new kid” sensitivity projected to Jorts. Pam got emotional about her perception that I favor Jean over Jorts and gave specific examples. Some of these things are fair. Jorts deserves respect as a member of our team.
There are 3 buildings in our workplace. Jean and Jorts are limited to one. HR told me there were 5 holdouts about vaccines, and restricting unvaccinated people from entering the building (to protect Jean and Jorts) was enough to win over 4 of them. That’s CRAZY, but great.
More importantly: the cats’ presence greatly enhances our work with our clients, and Jorts’ friendly nature has been so great. Both cats truly are doing important work. Truly Jorts deserves to be treated with respect.
We all deserve to be treated with dignity at work, so I will apologize to Jorts about some things that were insensitive or disrespectful.
a. Jean has a nice cat bed with her name on it, while Jorts has chosen an old boot tray in my office with a towel in it. Recently a visitor put wet boots in the boot tray and Pam saw Jorts sleeping on the wet boots. I bought a bed for Jorts today and a name tag has been ordered.
b. I will apologize to Jorts and remove the sign saying “DAYS SINCE JORTS HAD A TRASH CAN MISHAP: 0” Jorts likes to fish dirty paper cups out and he often falls into the bin or gets a cup stuck on his head, etc. (He is able to get out of the bin by tipping it over so it isn’t a safety issue.)
c. Jean’s “staff bio” has a photo of Jean, while Jorts’ bio has a photo of a sweet potato. I did not actually know either cat had a staff bio, but we will use a photo of Jorts instead of a sweet potato.
HR also suggested changing Pam’s duties so she is “in charge” of the cats. This I refused, the cats are my staff, not Pam’s. I think Pam was well-intended but actually not meeting the needs of either Jean or Jorts so they remain under my supervision. (Pam is also not to put cups on Jorts’ head or intentionally put him into frustrating situations given his unique needs.)
Lastly, and this made us both laugh so hard we can’t deal with it in person and will be said via email: Pam admits that she has been putting margarine on Jorts in an attempt to teach him to groom himself better. This may explain the diarrhea problem Jean developed (which required a vet visit).
Pam is NOT to apply margarine to any of her coworkers. Jean has shown she is willing to be in charge of helping Jorts stay clean. If this task becomes onerous for Jean, we can have a groomer help. I am crying laughing typing this.
Have a good weekend, everyone! Next week will be short and sweet.
December 17, 2021 — 6:31 pm
Comments: 8
That was disgusting, she said cheerfully
Our friend very much likes poppy seeds. And peanut butter, naturally: he ate every drop of it in plastic jars and even, somehow, managed to work the metal lid off of a glass jar. Bread crumbs, baking soda. He didn’t eat salt but he chewed through a number of packets of expensive sea salt and then walked through it.
He gnawed tiny holes in several plastic containers of cooking oil, so they didn’t leak until they were picked up, and then they squirted streams.
To be fair, an awful lot of the things I threw out were just way, way out of date. I haven’t gone right to the back of those cabinets since we moved in. I’m distressed by how many had very rusty lids. It doesn’t feel all that damp in our kitchen, but it must be.
Or maybe it’s just England.
December 15, 2021 — 8:26 pm
Comments: 8
The bastard made a vinaigrette!
It’s no surprise in a house as old as this that we have a seasonal rodent problem. It’s full of holes and hollow places.
We had the county ratman come out to the house not long after we moved in and he told us many and interesting things about rats. Then he flung blocks of poison all over the attics and crawl spaces. For many years afterwards, we had a Christmas tradition of smelly dead rat under the master bedroom floorboards.
The poison must’ve worn off or been consumed because we’ve got some active squeakers at the moment, especially banging around in the kitchen cabinets.
Last night, I smelled the pungent stink of vinegar, opened the cabinets to discover he’d chewed his way through the base of a plastic bottle of malt vinegar. Also through a bottle of spray olive oil. The bastard made a vinaigrette on my kitchen floor!
Cleaning that up, I discovered this lickety-clean peanut butter jar. The lid must have been plastic – it done vanished entirely!
I don’t work Wednesdays. Tomorrow I shall put on the moon suit and see what awaits me deep in the cabinets.
December 14, 2021 — 7:55 pm
Comments: 8
The village geese
Sorry I’m late. We ran into traffic.
Psych! I’m late because I fell asleep in my chair. But we were delayed getting home today because of this flock of village geese. They apparently round out their day having a drink and a splash out of the potholes in this access road.
By the time we got back, my daytime free-ranging cockerel was snoozing in a tree and had to be plucked to safety. He’s even dumber when he’s sleepy.
Tomorrow! 6 WBT! Dead Pool Round 147!
Be here or be at home soaking your cranky chicken in a bucket of warm soapy water!
December 9, 2021 — 8:42 pm
Comments: 3
Does she look happy to you?
A discussion of “mad as a wet hen” appears in the previous thread, so I had to dig out a picture. This is Mapp chicken in 2012, wet. I don’t know about mad, but she ain’t happy.
My lot *will* go out in the rain (especially the Polands) and get thoroughly soaked. Anything is better than being cooped up. But chickens famously will drown if they fall into water and scoot if water is sprayed at them (handy for hostile cockerels).
In fact, I’ve heard more than once that a chicken that falls into water will die even if it’s rescued in time. I don’t know if that’s an old chicken-keeper’s tale.
You can, however, wash a chicken in warm soapy water and give it a blow dry. People do it before shows. Then they put Vaseline on their combs and wattles to make ’em specially red and on their legs to make them…shiny, I guess.
Chicken keepers, eh?
Mapp here is not preparing for a show. Mapp was the tragic victim of a novice chicken keeper: me. Her first Summer as an adult, she abruptly stopped laying and sat on the nest all day looking miserable.
Turns out, she was just broody. Broody hens stop laying eggs. She went broody every Summer for the rest of her damn life (and she lived to be eight, which is good going for a bantam). I didn’t get many omelettes out of this old girl.
But I decided, in my ignorance, that she must be egg bound. Getting an egg stuck in your egg chute can be fatal, so I did panicky things like soak her in a bucket of warm soapy water for an hour, to no avail.
I don’t even want to talk about what I did with the olive oil.
December 8, 2021 — 8:00 pm
Comments: 10