Some days are better than others
Posted on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 | By 2 |
As far as days go, yesterday was not one of my best. I woke up in the morning in a mysterious soggy puddle. There was way too much wetness to be drool and not enough to be evidence of swimming dreams a la Sarah Silverman style. My best guess is that Huey, my 17-year-old chihuahua had his first bedtime accident. The puddle was around my mid-section, right about where he curls up each night. Sigh - surely the day has got to get better than that!
It continued to be just one of those days though. Nothing horrible happened, but nothing really good did either. It seems like life's minor annoyances are magnified on days when you wake up in a puddle of pee. Toward the end of the day when I decided I could work no more and needed some 'me' time I thought I might pour myself a little drink and watch a movie, something I never, ever do - mostly because there's simply too much stuff to be done!
Because it was starting to get a bit late in the day, I went outside to put the chickens back in their coop. I let them free-range in our side yard during the day, where they scratch around for bugs and grass, eat worms out of my compost pile, make a general mess of the place and are out of reach of my garden. When you let them in or out, they mostly follow each other in a perfect line to and from the coop, but there's one pesky chicken who never follows the others so I chased her down to carry her in. I'm sure the neighbors enjoy seeing me tearing around the yard hands extended, intent look on my face, trying to catch a chicken. They're really a lot quicker than you want to give them credit for and their specialty is the bob-and-weave. I finally cornered the little monster and scooped her up and what do you know but the second she was in my arms I felt warm wetness spreading through my shirt, on my jeans and even down into my sock and shoes!
[caption id="attachment_620" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Catch me if you can!"][/caption]
There's only so many times a person can stand to be eliminated on during the span of one day and I had reached my limit. I locked the girls up in the coop, put on my pajamas and snuggled on the couch, animal-free, to watch Juno. Thank goodness the rest of the evening passed without incident. Some days pajamas are the only answer.
I had another little surprise this morning. I reached under one of the hens who was sitting in our nest box to retrieve the eggs from underneath her and much to my surprise, she dropped a fresh one right in to my hand! I was shocked as I've never seen one of them lay an egg and certainly never caught one in my hand before!!! It was warm and wet, but not gross, and she didn't even squawk as she laid it. It was dry within seconds. Chickens are so odd!
Please share your frustrating farm stories with me if you have any so I can feel like I'm not alone out here!