Please send again...

For strange cosmic reasons, all email sent to me in the past 24 hours or so has been directed to never-never land.

If you've sent me anything and gotten either a bounce or stony silence, please send again!

Really tired cat

She must've had a hard cat day...

Chicken politics

The hens are on strike! We haven't had an egg in over a month. After they're a year old, most chickens molt and stop laying in the fall. I was under the impression that Easter Eggers laid all winter, but ours must have missed that memo.

This is the first year we haven't had spring chicks, so that's why it's a new problem. (Chicks born in the spring don't molt until their second fall.) My homesteading friends tell me that a light bulb in the coop will keep them laying, but for several reasons we don't want to do that.

So, no eggs for a while. We're hoarding the few we have remaining. (It's amazing how long real fresh eggs will last.)



After Stewpot disappeared, I wondered how the other roosters would behave. Both had been extremely submissive, and Stewpot had let them stay near the flock, as long as they didn't, umm, try stuff.

Big Red, the Rhode Island Red, decided he'd like to be the new boss. It worried me. He began acting aggressively, and though I had so far been able to bluff him into backing down, I feared we'd have to butcher him. An agressive rooster that large was NOT something I wanted to keep.

Then one afternoon we noticed Big Red wandering alone in the yard, past the time that the chickens normally put themselves to bed.



There had been a fight. He'd lost.

The dark spots on his comb are dried blood. I figured he was now blind in one eye too. Plus, there must have been injuries we couldn't see, since he sat in a dark corner of the coop and wouldn't eat or drink. I thought he might die.



But he improved. Now he's eating again -- he loved this treat of chicken scratch I brought him -- and even opens that eye now and then.



Meet the new boss. His name is Eagle.

Throwing out the previously liberal rooster-inclusion policies, Eagle has changed the rules. Big Red is not allowed to stay with the flock. I'm not sure how that is going to work out.



His comb's a little odd. I can't decide if it's a rose comb, pea comb, strawberry comb, or some combination.

But he'll eat out of my hand. He's a very sweet rooster. I just hope he stays that way.

One-sided conversation overheard immediately after placing into our cart some milk with an expiration date marked at least ten days into the future

Man, leaning over to peer through an empty space in the megamart dairy cooler, presumably to speak to someone in the stock room: "Is this the freshest milk you've got?"

... (We couldn't hear the other side of the conversation.)

Man: "I need milk that's really, really fresh."

...

Man: "No, I need milk that's fresher than this."

...

Man, increasingly disturbed: "I've got to have VERY, VERY, VERY fresh milk."

... (I wonder if the worker behind the milk has realized by this time, as we have, that the man is in need of a mental health professional.)

Man, almost shouting: "I MUST have the freshest milk that is available!" (His tone insinuates that the worker is deliberately withholding the newest milk.)

... (One imagines the harried low-wage worker telling him to go find a cow.)

Man (sputtering loudly; tragicomically incensed): "I'm going to report you to management!"

He darted around in an agitated manner, looking for a manager, but of course could not find anyone. We slipped away before violence could occur.

Special treat

Guess what I had for lunch. A special treat!


How'd you guess?!


Hey wait a minute.

Linkage

Great linkage:

The always-fun Friday Ark.

And a densely-growing Festival of the Trees!

Hello dear

Slow game cam week, but a busy week for me. (More about that later.)

As of last weekend, most of the new Cuddeback pictures were fuzzy rear-view shots of raccoons and rabbits. This deer photo is not the model of sharpness either, but it's the best one of the lot. She's coming up out of the creek at 9:30 in the bright daylight... if I'd been looking out of the window I'd have seen her.

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The first Hooded Mergansers of the season arrived this week. We've already had several of the other winter birds for a while... Cedar Waxwings, White-throated Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, Kinglets (Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned), Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, Song Sparrows, Yellow-rumped Warblers, etc.

Not many of them sing in the winter -- Song Sparrows are a nice exception. If we're lucky we might hear a Winter Wren now and then. It's one of my favorite birdsongs, but I don't hear it often. The Winter Wren also has one of my favorite latin names: Troglodytes troglodytes! My old birdwatching teacher called them feathered meatballs because of their small size. I'd say, feathered meatballs on speed. (Listen to their song to see what I mean.)

I found one dead in the yard last week and almost cried. He was so small. Ten paperclips would have balanced him on a scale.

For the Birds

A new edition of I and the Bird is up at Five Wells. Go see!

Futuristic

We have a new TV channel that's been airing some old British science fiction programs. One show we watched yesterday was set in a future that has, by now, long since passed. I love retro sci-fi... I marvel at all the gadgets they were sure we'd have invented by now. If I become indignant, it's only because in real life this millennium has proven so unjust. Where is my hover car? My personal spacecraft? My jet pack? Why are those slacker scientists not busy inventing the transporter and the thing that prepares dinner in two seconds?

But what's even more engrossing are the now-everyday things that the writers didn't foresee. Tiny computers? No. In retro sci-fi, they fill rooms with their huge blinky blippiness. And using vacuum tubes and reel-to-reel tape must be why it takes them so long to answer questions.

I suppose the wristwatch videophones weren't far off the mark, but who'd have predicted that teenagers would prefer texting? The purple hair was insightful, but of course they had to go and screw it up by giving everyone the same purple hair.

But the funniest thing to me -- the most anachronistic -- is that in these futuristic programs, they're all still smoking!

Turkey day

Happy turkey day!

Thistledown

Before


After

One of the purple thistles. I have to admit I didn't examine it closely, but I'm leaning towards Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense).

Watermelons 2006

It wasn't that we didn't plant watermelons early. We did. It's just that they were part of the straw-bale gardening experiment that went horribly wrong. And we didn't re-plant until the first of August. A race was on between the vines and the first hard frost.



This was our first attempt at growing watermelons.

My planting method went like this: "Oh, that was a good watermelon that we got from the farmer's market. I'll just toss some of these seeds onto the unplanted garden area and see what happens."

My husband's planting method was more sophisticated: "I'll plant some of these seeds that Aunt Polly gave us a few years ago. I'm even going to weed the area first, and plant in mounds. But I'm not going to use any fertilizer, because this dirt is so good. It's all a matter of mind control, anyway."



You might be surprised to learn that we did actually manage to grow a few excellent watermelons.

They were very tasty! We had a two or three week window between the first ripe melon and the first hard frost (around the first of November).



Did you know that melons can suffer from blossom end rot? It's a common problem with tomatoes, but for melons I get the impression that you really have to be trying. Oops. I blamed it on not fertilizing this end of the garden at all. Hubby blamed it on not watering enough (and improper mind control). It was probably the result of both. (I don't subscribe to the mind control theory of gardening.)

Otters, we have otters

It worked! Hubby put the game cam where something seemed to have created a path from the creek to the pond. We'd seen fresh otter scat near there.



I'd hoped that the flash would scare the otters away. Sure, they're cute, but they've eaten most of the fish from our ponds.



Considering that this picture was taken a full minute after the previous one, I don't think that strategy is going to work.

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When I swap over to the new Blogger, I'll create a category for the game cam, so you'll be able to click and see all the related posts together. But since I'm getting a lot of Google hits on the topic lately, I'll mention again that this is a Cuddeback game camera that we ordered online from "Boss Buck".

Weekend Game Cam

Lots of coming and going in the woods...


Pair of bobcats! I've noticed that at least one of the local bobcats is sort of sway-backed... I think that's her in the foreground.


Nice coyote! Almost as if he were posing.


Racoons are still the most common visitor. I didn't realize that their hands were hairless like that, but it makes sense.


I'm not sure if he's heavier than the previous one, or just fluffed up in the cold.


Click the picture for extra eeriness!


Hubby moved the camera, hoping to catch a beaver or otter on this path down to the pond. No luck, but we did get this picture of a Great Blue Heron. (Nice, but the camera is more focused on the background.)

He's moving it again today, in quest of otters.