Ever since i got my new older model iphone over a year ago i have been fighting a battle with technology when it comes to photographing color. The camera on this version of iphone is always doing two things: trying to correct night time exposure to look like a daytime sky and trying to correct the color of sunsets and sunrises as if it were erasing rosacea from a face in a portrait. Unable to capture night time or color as i could see it with my eye and not tech savvy enough to figure out how to tell the camera to stop “correcting” conditions i was trying to capture, i quit photographing sunsets, sunrises, and the moon. Why bother? I couldnt capture it as i saw it so what was the point? I just enjoyed the moment and unfortunately did not share those moments on the blog this past year. Now, i have finally taken the time to sit down and research what it is i have to do. There is a “night mode” setting that must be selected for moon photography and a “vibrant” setting that must be selected for sunsets and sunrises. This is annoying because you have to open one drop down menu, then select another, then choose the setting, then click again to select. All that wastes time when the moon is orange and has just risen or a sun is setting…the light conditions can change in mere seconds and you risk missing the shot doing all that nonsense. I liked my old camera…it just assumed you didnt want anything corrected unless you specified otherwise. I only had to click and grab the shot. So, for those who care, the brilliant shot was missed, when it was deep pink and purple and the light blanketed everything, but by the time i figured the settings out, the sunrise was still vibrant, just orange and teal instead. 
A mere 30 feet from where Nakano had made her web i found a female orb weaver nearly identical to her in size and marking and deduced that they must have come from the same egg sac. If they are different sizes i assume they hatched at different times and came from different mothers but these two were of identical size so there is a good chance given the distance between them and the size of both of them that they are sisters. I named Nakano’s sister who had made her web near the extension shed, “Adira”.
Meanwhile, some strange developments were happening above and to the left of Nakano’s massive web. First an egg sac showed up. It was a sizeable egg sac and it was near Nakano’s web so i assumed it was hers. Then what may be a common house spider moved into the webbing right next to the egg sac and never left, but the common house spider was a small one. The egg sac seemed way too big to belong to the common house spider. Why was it in Nakano’s area? Did she not mind it there? Was it hiding behind her as a number of male praying mantises were hunting bugs on the porch near the light? I was not sure how the common house spider factored in or co-existed. Then about a million tiny orb weaver babies seemed to be present climbing all over Nakano’s web, which made me consider that the egg sac was notably brown and weathered and could have been left by a previous orb weaver because in my experience orb weavers die after they make an egg sac and are not around months later to see their babies hatch. Then, another huge egg sac appeared beside the first one, this one white in color. I wondered if Nakano had made two egg sacs, the first one was the common house spider’s, or the first one belonged to a previous orb weaver and the second one was Nakano’s first egg sac.
Part of my lunch: roasted japanese and thai eggplant from my coworker’s garden in italian olive oil with garlic and salt, a little ziploc of brown rice, and a ziploc of grapes. Real food. Good for you. Also tasty. No dish washing needed.
Half of the people i know are struggling to afford to put food in their pantries and on the table. If something is a bit over ripe or about to spoil, we dont throw it out. We make use of it, because food is a huge chunk of our living expense right now. It has doubled in price since the pandemic while our hourly wages have stayed the same. Before the pandemic i lived comfortably. Now i am struggling to stay above that ever present line where i can use my paycheck to pay bills and not have to dip into my savings account because im aware im no longer in a position to “save” ever again so once that account is empty….the ear-marked money for the back end of the adjustable rate mortgage is gone. We ration the days we eat fish and try to hunt wild game instead of buy meat in the grocery because a box of bullets and the time spent is cheaper than filling a chest freezer with beef or chicken from the super market right now. Food is like treasure for myself and this half of the people i know and so showing up at somebody’s house with food or trading food for another resource in barter….its quite a valuable trade or gift given.
The other half of the people i know are on glp-1s, which let me tell you, looks very strange to those of us struggling to eat. We’d give so much to be able to return to a time where food was affordable and widely available. to watch people choose not to eat when they have the money to do so looks pretty near insanity to those of us just trying to eat in a world where doing so is now out of our price range.
There is an element of “this is dumb”, an element of sadness, and an element of “where does this end?”.
Don’t get me started on the commercials for glp-1’s. Im aware that every product sold is now marketed towards users of glp-1’s from gym equipment to yogurt, everything now has “great for people on glp-1s written on the packaging. But the commercials are a step too far. They are using singing dancing animated fluffy animals in clothes created by AI to market glp-1s. The scenarios these animals are acting out are ones in which the characters value is completely based on their outer looks and the entire family abandons them or hates them because they dont look good. Or, the ones where a spouse is cheating with a family member because her body looks good and the wife’s doesnt. Well then they get on glp-1s and depending on which commercial it is, the ending is that they either finally catch the cheating spouse’s attention and live happily ever after because they look good now, or the family finally likes them because they look good, or they realize they never needed the family because they were always holding them back and they set out to conquer the world alone as a smoking bombshell that everyone is paying attention to. So i think the creators of these commercials should be punished financially for what they’ve done, since that is the only language they speak apparently. They should be made to give up all the money they made ending reality as we know it for adults and children alike but i know, people will just continue to worship and further employ them for their excellent ability to make companies more and more money. The problem is this: they are either of the opinion that we as consumers are infantile and our attention span is one of 5 to 10 seconds so we must be sung to by cute little animals in a musical fashion for us to be listening. My intelligence is insulted if so. Or, they are marketing towards children. We are raising a generation of little girls who are going to expect to be left, verbally abused, or cheated on if they dont look like gym time barbie and a generation of little boys that are going to grow up learning that the outer shell of a woman is the only thing we should be paying attention to when selecting a mate and its totally statistically normal to respond with verbal abuse, cheating, or divorce if their significant other does not look like gym time barbie. We are living in a day and age where only a two income household can afford to pay a mortgage and bills so the majority of families do not have a stay at home parent influencing the kids. Television, after school programs, babysitters, and daycare are raising them. Television being the primary babysitter i know of for the families i know where both parents work. That screen is teaching them about the world more than we are and somebody has to tell these kids that the scenarios acted out by those cute little singing fluffy animals on screen is not right, not biblical, and why. I believe that these peddlers of glp-1s will be the death of young people looking for substance when choosing a life partner. They will be the death of the concept of a life partner because these kids will grow up thinking that if their significant other missteps in some way, they’ll just dump them and get another better one. I have a visceral soul level negative reaction to the singing animals with emotions written all over their faces as they are abandoned or cheated on for not looking nice. And its icing on the cake that the creators add warts, green eye makeup, and pimples to many of the characters just to make sure we know how gross the overweight woman is.
So first i will begin by telling you why this is dumb. When they say “oh, its okay, my insurance is paying for all this.” Thats not entirely true. Its paying for the glp-1 but its not buying all the things you have to take to supplement what you’re now deficient in if you’re taking a glp-1. You have to buy that stuff out of pocket. And, the insurance only pays for things if they are making enough money to do so. When i cancelled my health insurance years ago it was because i made just a few hundred dollars too much to receive a credit from the government to cover my health insurance cost. So, i owed them $10,000 a year for health insurance even though i only had two regular physical checkups in a 12 month span. Meanwhile, some people are paying 35 dollars a month for insurance because they make $10 an hour. It is the middle class with their credit revoked that pays in enough money to this system for the government to be able to afford to offer $35 a month plans to those on minimum wage. The insurance is buying most of your glp-1 for you because they are taking enough from the middle class that they may lose their houses to afford to keep paying that insurance. And they conveniently only tell those with revoked credits that they are revoked because they “made just at too much money” after the whole year of insurance has been had and the bill is due. Tax time. You can cancel for next year but you have to find a way to pay them for what you now know you already owe. Insurance is now priced above my and many of my friends’ heads. I no longer ride horses because i cant afford to break anything. But i digress. The reason this is dumb is because for centuries humans have consumed food for the purposes of survival, of building muscle mass so they can hunt and for nourishment so their organs will continue functioning. Now, humans are on glp-1s to prevent them from wanting to consume food. People think they’re being so discreet. They’re not discreet. Once healthy friends and coworkers start showing up looking like holocaust victims with pencil thin arms, hollowed out faces, and visible collar bones, replace their wardrobe with xs everything and show up to the lunch table with a clear pink protein water drink talking about their lunch tastes so good and has caffeine in it and gives them energy….you’re not being discreet. I know you’re on glp-1’s when your whole lunch is a see-through pink drink where you added protein caffeine powder to water and put a fancy straw in it. The other clue would be the brown paper bags in the mini fridge with peoples names on the outside containing glass vials of glp-1s. There used to be sandwiches and bags of grapes, yogurt cups in the mini fridge and now its empty except for these tiny brown paper bags with vials of clear liquid in them. Try as i might, i cant change the minds of these people. They drank the koolaid and they love their little vials of “delete the food noise”. Okay, what is being labeled “food noise” is hunger. Hunger has been there evolutionarily for hundreds of years to let our bodies know when its time to hunt or gather in order to sustain the body’s longevity and continue existing. Hunger has a purpose. Its a good thing. A necessary, normal thing. Its not “food noise”. To delete it is not a good thing. Its a natural process that we are meant to have and be a part of. Scientists took advantage of this feedback loop and started engineering processed foods to be addictive and tell the brain that we need “‘more” at all times. If you just eat fruit, veg, meat, seafood, nuts, seeds, legumes, and grains, you will not have an OVERACTIVE hunger feedback loop unless you have a specific disorder. The average person, when not eating processed scientifically engineered food, only gets hungry when the previous fuel is being used up and its time to input more. I have food allergies and a budget so everything i consume is made from scratch and comes from fish, wild game, gluten free grains, seeds, nuts, vegetables, fruit, or legumes. I do not eat processed foods save for dairy free sugar free chocolate once in a while. On the weekends i only eat twice a day, not because of glp-1s but because when i dont have to work, thats all i get hungry for. If processed foods ruined peoples feedback loop surrounding food, the answer is not more human control but less. Quit fiddling with something nature designed and go back to the original. Eat real clean basic ingredients. Dont buy from the frozen or prepared section at the grocery. Make food from scratch. When you are full you will be full. Processed food has way more calories than we need in one sitting. From scratch natural hunter/gatherer food does not. Go back to a paleo diet for God’s sake. Why are we injecting ourselves with needles at work here? It doesnt make sense to me. I havent even gotten into the insanity of the whole concept yet. You inject yourself with a clear liquid to make you not hungry so you wont eat the food that gives you vitamins, protein, and the nourishment you need to build and maintain muscle mass and grow and maintain hair, instead of just eating a paleo diet and exercising at least twice a week. Well, then the glp-1 will not only delete fat but muscle as well so now you need protein and a vigorous 6 day a week workout routine to maintain that shrinking muscle mass. But, we dont like eating remember? Eating food is the enemy. So we’ll get protein in the form of a gummy. Now you have to take a protein gummy, a hair loss gummy, a greens gummy, a vitamin d gummy, a vitamin c gummy, a magnesium gummy, a calcium gummy…. So we’re working out 6 times a week just trying to not lose the muscle mass we have already whereas off the glp-1 working out twice a week would add muscle mass to what you already have. We’re eating a regiment if gummies instead of food, and injecting ourselves with diabetes drugs to delete a natural life-preserving phenomena called hunger that every other animal on the planet has and benefits from. If you have a capuchin monkey you have to take him or her to the wildlife vet each year to maintain your license to keep him or her and part of the requirement for keeping that monkey is keeping their weight within a healthy normal range. And you do that not by injecting the monkey with glp-1s but by feeding the monkey foods it would find in its natural habitat rather than pup cups, potato chips, and cup cakes. Im watching the people around me engage in idiocy and i cant stop them…all i can do is refuse to join them. I enjoy food. Im 105 lbs with a thyroid disorder that can cause weight gain. My weight is absolutely due to the foods i choose to put in my body. I would challenge anyone to eat what i eat for a year and see if they dont weigh what they desire to weigh. There’s literally no processed food in my diet besides the occasional square of sugar free dairy free chocolate or a box of oat milk for a fruit smoothie, but budget dictates oat milk must happen sparingly. I enjoy the taste of the foods i do put in my mouth and i refuse to give the “food noise” up because i understand its necessary and beneficial place in my life and i would like to continue enjoying good seafood, good deer meat, good quail, good chocolate, and good lemon pepper broccoli and good fresh persimmons from my tree, good roasted zucchini, garlic mushrooms, peanut butter on apples…. Its tasty. Why give that up?
The sad aspect of this is that i am watching people who were vibrant, thriving, beautiful women, at a healthy weight, who maybe thought they needed to lose the 5 extra they had hanging around their belly button to be bikini ready or something, go from looking healthy, fit, and beautiful in their uniform to looking like a holocaust victim with a uniform draped over them. Their cheeks are sunken in. Their face is boney and hollowed out. The veins are visible at their temples. Their hair is thinning. Their arms and legs are pencil thin. Their collar bones are visible and pronounced and the skin is draped over and clings to them. They look starved. My family members generations ago died in concentration camps and i can imagine they would also not be able to make sense of this. They did not have a choice in their starvation but these people are not held in camps behind razor wire. These people are starving themselves by choice. Ive kept my mouth shut thus far and just watched them do it as everyone has a right to make their own choice and if that is their choice, it is not my place to try and sway them from it, but the sing song animal commercials was a step too far. I will say my peace now and if it falls on deaf ears so be it, but i will have said my peace and my soul will know it. The people i am watching whither are mothers. I wonder what their children think of the frail figure that now stands where a healthy mother used to. I used to admire the figure of one of them so much. She was beautiful. For the life of me i dont know why she thought she needed to lose weight. She looked amazing. Now her face is sunken in, her hair is falling out, and i can see her veins and collar bones. She’s “swimsuit ready” if you want to see a skeleton with skin stretched over it in a bikini. I dont understand this insanity. But i was alive in the 90s. I remember a time when people were institutionalized and treated for eating disorders for this kind of body in the 90s. The children growing up right now think this is normal…a thing to shoot for, and we’re teaching them that the outside is the only important thing. Where are the speeches about how its whats on the inside that matters…who you are as a person? We forget that those young people missed our past and all they know is the present and the future and they dont have any of that grounded stuff to draw on later…its our job to teach them morals, ethics, logic, and truth……not this.
As far as “where does this end?”……if we keep going like this for 10 years it ends with a generation that doesnt know what it is to value someone for anything other than what they look like. That’s where it ends.
We made it 6 days. We did not make it 41 days. On the morning of the sixth day Cashew had come to my bed and barked every hour on the hour since 10 pm the night before. I never hit deep sleep, ever, because every hour on the hour cashew was there barking in my face. It was as if she said, “well if the rules dont apply to him, they dont apply to me neither. Im gonna try barking whenever i feel like it in the house and we’ll see if you care as little as you do when he does it!” Buddy wasnt even crowing. He was under his towel, but he was screaming as soon as cashew was barking, so every hour on the hour i had to get up and sing soft kitty to a ballistic rooster. Then at 6:00 am he started with all that “cock-a-doodle-doo” stuff and cashew went over to bark at him and i told her to shut up and buddy thought i was yelling at him and i looked over to see trash all over the kitchen floor. An entire full bag of trash had been spread all over the kitchen floor because cashew had raided it for rooster tootsie rolls. Cue the waterfall of diarrhea. I looked at the floor around the rooster crate and found it spotless, as in vacuumed by dog. Not only had she eaten the rooster shit and left the evidence of her crime for me to clean up, she had also ingested several raw grains, protein pellets, and seeds that Buddy had flung out of his crate when ballistic. By 7 am she was whimpering and pacing, scratching on the door. I had to get up at 7:05. I had wanted to try for 7:30 but i had no choice. She was about to be violently ill in the house. I let her outside in the dog run and as she squatted and shook i muttered, “i cant do this anymore. I cant do this anymore! I cant do this anymore! I cant spend one more day, one more hour, one more minute with everybody making extremely poor life decisions in my one room house with me! I dont even know what im saying! Ive got to get some sleep! I have to sleep! I have to have quiet! I have to sleep! I cannot spend the whole weekend with crowing every thirty seconds…i cant watch the dogs while i sleep, i cant deal with whatevers coming out of her! I cant deal with any of this! Generations of chickens are just gonna have to be fine. He’s just gonna have to be healthy! We came, we tried, its just not possible. Its humanly impossible. What human could live like this? They cant. Its impossible. The military uses shit like this as an interrogation technique on terrorists for God’s sake. Im only one person…..im only human…..” As i was muttering to myself in my sleep deprivation psychosis, i had walked into the house, opened the rooster crate, removed the water bowl, removed the food bowl, tackled Buddy, lifted him into my arms, and was now carrying him around the outside of the pullet pen like a football. I said, “Okay guys, look here, here’s your nice new boyfriend and here’s your nice new hens and yall can just be nice to each other and like each other and assimilate and such cuz here’s the deal here, i need you to give me babies in february and we’re gonna make some reese’s peanut butter cup chickens in february and march okay but we need the rooster here to do it and see, you’re not gonna find a more friendly gentlemanly rooster i mean, 99.9 percent of them are homicidal maniacs that will rip out your feathers and mush your face in the dirt so yall just go ahead and like him cuz if you kill him im gonna have to get you a meaner rooster cuz there aint another nice one to choose from. And you can go ahead and enjoy your life with these ladies cuz it sure beats getting culled in a kill pen in mason, right? Yeah, theres ladies here for you, so everybody just be nice and like each other, okay?” I carried Buddy around inside the pen and let him look at the ladies. Then i put him down and left. The lead hen fought Buddy fiercely for about 30 seconds before she realized he’s much bigger and fights like a rooster. The seller had kindly removed his spurs for the moment. Im sure they’ll grow back but i appreciated that detail during the assimilation fight with the main hen. When the lead hen called uncle the rooster let her up and went about his business eating. Nobody challenged him again. They all ate and hung out together and Buddy crowed every 30 seconds all throughout the day until 7 pm. Im wondering if he can be heard on neighboring ranches. Im also wondering if the prolific non stop crowing is part of the reason he was about to be culled. Its not a reason for me to cull him. He’s nice to the hens, pretty, healthy, and he runs from me rather than at me when i come to give them more food or collect eggs. Thats rare to find so if he wants to crow every 30 seconds im not going to try to stop him. I am somewhat worried a neighbor will get fed up and try to stop him. I dont remember ira crowing every thirty seconds. I think that frequency may be specific to Buddy. But, its a small price to pay for a non-homicidal rooster. I cant guarantee he’ll stay that way. Sometimes roosters become possessive and protective once they have hens they perceive as their own. However, no matter what happens, i need him to make reese’s chickens next spring. I just hope my neighbors’ houses are far enough away that they cant really hear him like i can. And i hope raccoons are threatened by that noise rather than drawn to it.
As you’ll hear in this audio clip, beginning at 4 am, Buddy crows once every 30 seconds until around 7 pm. I became acutely aware of this because Buddy was sharing a 1 room 384 square foot house with a tin roof with me and both dogs, one of which has always possessed a strong sense of social justice. My aussie knows the rules i hold for her and her sister. You can bark as much as you want outdoors. In fact, i encourage it, because there are different barks for porcupine, deer, coyote, fox, raccoon/possum/armadillo and human….they’re like a doorbell with customized rings for each intruder showing up uninvited. Its a very useful and appreciated alert system for the homestead. However, once you are in the house there are really only 4 acceptable reasons to bark under that tin roof. One: you’ve eaten something you really shouldnt have, are regretting all recent life choices, and need to be let outside to attend to the urgent business of projectile shitting and puking green for miles where mom doesnt have to use 10 thousand paper towels on cleanup. Two: there is a dangerous intruder in the yard that could potentially pose a violent threat to the chickens, yourself, or mom. Three: the sun is fully up on a weekday and mom is showing no sign of going to work which means she’s probably slept through all 40 alarms as well as the one plugged into the wall and needs your help keeping her career. Four: something is on fire. If cashew barks in the house it is absolutely ear booming under that tin ceiling. I calmly rise from bed, turn on the light, and run through the check list. I check to see if anyone is pacing and holding their legs together as if the biggest shit is coming down the pipes and they’re not sure how much longer they can hold it in. I watch for whimpering or scratching at the door behavior. If there is none and theres no stomach gurgling, i cross that one off the list. I put my head lamp on, get the rifle, leave them in the house, and go do a sweep of the immediate area near the chicken pens, dog run, house, and sheds. I check to make sure the sun is not up and the time is still before dawn. Then i walk around the interior and exterior of the house smelling for smoke and looking for flame. Lastly, i check all 4 stove burners and the oven to make sure all cooking surfaces are turned to “off”. Then i walk directly back over to Cashew and give her a good swat on the butt, usually accompanied with a stern verbal scolding and i go back to bed. In this house we dont bark because of the wind. We dont bark because we heard a car or motorcycle up the road. We dont bark because a song bird tweeted. Not simply because the echo on the tin hurts my ears but because if you have a dog that barks at everything, you’ll never know when they’re barking at something you should act on. I cant use them as an effective doorbell if they’re ringing 24/7. So, ive trained them that there are 4 acceptable reasons to bark while in the house and with the exception of thunder, both dogs adhere to the criteria pretty religiously. And in return i take them seriously when they bark and go thoroughly through the checklist of 4 things to investigate. Its a good system. A system Buddy was not familiar with, which became wildly apparent to Cashew when Buddy began to crow once every 30 seconds beginning at 5 am. I heard the crowing begin. How could i not? I was sleeping 2 feet away from him in my zip up mosquito net tent bed with a tin ceiling. I also heard the jingle of at least one dog’s tags. I cracked open an eyelid to observe Cashew standing nose to beak with the rooster in front of his crate, only the metal bars separating them. She seemed to be willing him to be quiet. Roosters crow. Thats what they do. I didnt think we’d have much luck stopping him so i didnt try. I heard Cashew’s “im about to bark in the house” warning growl ans i piped up sternly, “Don’t you dare.” I knew what would happen if Cashew barked at Buddy. It wouldnt result in Buddy seeing the error of his ways and vowing to live a reformed noise free existence. I thought at least if she didnt bark at him, maybe i could catch a minute of shut eye here or there between crows. I dreamed that maybe he’d wait five minutes once or twice but no…..starting at 5 am he crowed religiously every 30 seconds until i left for work and wasnt home to hear it any longer. That first night, Cashew heeded my warning but then i left them all crated in the house together and Cashew and Sili probably had to hear Buddy crow every 30 seconds for upwards of 8 hours before i came back and let them outside. Going into that second night, neither dog slept right by Buddy’s pen. They both curled up together near the front door in front of the oven. On the second day Buddy began crowing every 30 seconds at 4 in the morning. I heard Cashew’s tags jingle. When i opened my eyes, to my surprise, she was not standing in front of Buddy’s crate. She was standing in front of me, at my bed. She had her lip curled and her head cocked, looking at me like, “Are you going to do something about this or should i?” In her eyes, Buddy wasnt following the house rules. She could not understand why in tarnation this creature was allowed to bark when none of the 4 disasters that rendered barking in the house acceptable were happening. She stood beside my bed and blew air out through her nose. I zipped the mosquito net tent shut in response. I was very sleep deprived and drained from work. I was trying to get just a few minutes of sleep here and there between his every 30 to 60 second crows. It vaguely registered that Cashew wanted something done here but i was basically conscious but asleep. I tried to go back to sleep. And then it happened. Cashew barked. She stood directly in front of Buddy’s crate and gave her loudest most intimidating bark she could muster to put this new strange looking dog in its place. Within seconds i heard the frantic squawking of a ballistic rooster flapping about the crate and knocking everything over. He was screaming bloody murder like someone was after him with a butcher knife. Crowing was one noise but screaming was another entirely. More long winded. Crowing went like: “cock-a-doodle-doo” or more realistically “er-er-er-er-errrrrrr.” Screaming was a noise like “BAWCK!!!!!!!!! Bck….bck…….bck…….bck…..bck….bck……BAWCK!!!!…bck…bck….BAWCK!!!!’ BAWCK!!!!! BAWCK!!!!!!” Complete with attempted flight and less than graceful acrobatics resulting in the flinging of both seed and poop in any and all directions. I tried shooshing him like a baby, “shhhhhh…..shhhhh…..shhhhhhh….shhhhhh, you’re okay….” I tried getting down on his level on the floor and speaking in a soothing voice….you know what the only thing that would soothe him was? Me singing Sheldon Cooper’s comfort song from the show BIG BANG THEORY: “soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur…..happy kitty…sleepy kitty…purr purr purr”. So there i am “shhhhh shhhh-ing a rooster at 4 in the morning and singing “soft kitty” to a giant orange bird in my best “miss rachel” voice and he’s settled down and unpoofed himself and is beginning to close that big golden eye of his when guess who barks for the hell of it, just to let him know that she better not hear another peep out of him…….just guess…. Rouuuuuuufgh! And he immediately starts up again with the “BAWCK!!!!!!…bck….bck…..BAWCK!!!!! BAWCK!!!!!…bck…BAWCK!!!!! And the flapping and flailing about, the flinging of both seed, poop, and now the spilling of the water….. i stand up and look at her, “Why?”. She looks at me as if to say, “hey, i gave you a chance to handle it. You wanted to sleep. So i’ll train the new weird dog you brought home.” I yell at her which the rooster then cant differentiate between yelling at her and yelling at him and then more screaming and flailing and flinging of seed and shit in all directions. I get in the bed and put the pillow over my head and try to drown them all out, but it continues. So, i get up again. I get down on his level. I make eye contact. I shhhh shhhh him. I sing soft kitty in my best miss rachel voice. He unpoofs himself and his little head droops towards the floor. His eyes close. I tip toe back to bed. My eyes are closed no more than 4 minutes when i hear at Max volume, “cock-a-doodle-doo!” Cashew goes, “That’s it! He didnt get the message! I will tell him again.” Barking…..screaming and thrashing…..which leads to more barking, indicating that she would like him to stop that at once, which leads to more hysteria from the rooster, more disciplinary barking, and more absolute hysteria from the rooster…..For two hours i laid there willing it to stop, occasionally getting up to sing soft kitty to no avail because he’d always crow in a few minutes which would activate nurse ratchet/prison guard at rikers in a fur suit over there and if she thought she wasnt being listened to she’d get right up to his crate and scream at him inches from his face to quit screaming, cuz that had proved so effective a tactic for the past 1 hour and 45 minutes……
After two hours i rose from bed and through gritted teeth said, “Stay away from me…..for your own good.” Both dogs went to the door and sat, then laid down warily. I put food in their bowls and put them in the crates to eat it before letting them out. Both dogs refused to eat. The rooster continued his eternal song, “cock-a-doodle-doo.” Cashew began her “im gonna bark” growl. I pointed a finger in her face and with crazy woman danger eyes i said in my best psycho voice, “ZIP IT!” Both dogs sat down quietly but refused to eat. I said, “fine. We’re all on hunger strike! Great! Go outside!” I opened the door and let both dogs out to the dog run. I said “stay here.” I returned to the house. “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” Sixty seconds later, “cock-a-doodle-doo!” I calmly refilled Buddy’s water dish and Buddy’s food dish. I picked up all the rooster poop and seed he had flung around the house. I put that in the trash. We’ll come back to this later.
I was pretty good at ignoring Buddy. Sili was pretty good at ignoring Buddy. He was annoying as heck when it came to volume level and frequency of crowing but Sili and i seemed to just know that he was a bird biologically wired to crow and there was nothing we could do but try to endure it. The life cycle of a stick tight flea was 41 days from baby to whats considered adulthood. So, we just needed to survive 41 days of sharing the one room tiny house with an excessively vocal rooster. Cashew was not as good at ignoring Buddy and his vocalizations. She engaged in nightly bark offs with Buddy and i began to worry about whether she would give him a heart attack and this would be all for nothing. Nevermind that the racket of their bark offs was worse than the crowing and resulted in seed and poo everywhere. My friend suggested i put a towel over his crate at night like a parakeet and see if that quieted him down and convinced him it was time to sleep. It worked in that it got him to sleep till 6 am instead of starting up his warning that the sun was near at 4 am. However, at 6 am on the dot every morning he would start clucking and moving around…..within 1 minute he’d make his first crow, and then every 30 seconds after.
Ever since Olive joined the menopausal bunch meaning i had no more laying age buff hens and Sumac turned out to be just Sue, my pipe dream of making Reese’s peanut butter cup chickens come february when their eggs would be large enough to contain a full grown chick, was drifting further away. I still had chocolate hens. If i could get a buff roo, all might not be lost. I could still make chocolate peanut butter colored chickens! I put out a feeler, asking on not one but two nearby county chicken facebook page groups. Now each group services about 5 different cities. So i basically asked 10 towns/cities if anyone had a buff orpington rooster that was not homicidal that they were willing to part with. I’d pay and i’d drive. After 2 weeks one lady answered and said she had a rooster for sale, but from the pictures it was clearly not buff or orpington, which were necessities for me and what i was trying to do. About 3 days in i contacted two people who i knew had raised orpingtons in the past. The one in fredericksburg had moved on. She had cinnamon queens for sale now and was completely done with orpingtons. They’re not for everybody. They’re very friendly and large enough to fight some would be predators and win, but they are not the most intelligent of chicken breeds and ive had trouble with them being false broody. They want to sit on eggs but if a chick emerges, they will kill it. So you tell me, real broody or false broody? Anyways, i love the orpingtons, its my favorite breed. I do not want a chicken who can outsmart me daily. I want one that is not escaping and wants to sit in my lap, and can also maybe kill possums. The contact in mason was still raising orpingtons and said she had a buff roo she was willing to give me. I said id take him and we arranged a date to meet in cherry spring on the side of 87 at the dilapidated old dance hall to do the exchange. We both found the area with no trouble and met right on time. There was a storm coming in. There was lightning and it was kind of starting to rain a bit as we stood and talked between our cars. She transferred a very pretty orangey buff rooster into the dog crate in my car out of the wire rectangle she had him in in her trunk. She said her chickens all had stick tight fleas real bad but she hadnt seen any on the roos as they were in a kill pen, separate from the hens. She said she hadnt seen any wonky temperament things with him but he had been in a pen with all roosters for a while so if he became aggressive or something happened to him and i needed a new roo just call her back and she’d hatch me another one. My previous buff orpington roo had been pretty near cream colored. He was a deep orangey buff. He’d probably make very pretty babies. I hoped he was a nice roo. I also hoped he was healthy. His comb looked nice and red, a great sign! Pretty soon i realized his poops were solid and healthy as could be. No mucus or blood. I drove him to my neighbor’s property and i held him in the yard while she checked all over his head, his comb, his legs, between his toes…looking for stick tight fleas. Id never had them and once you get them, you have to remove everything, including the soil, to get rid of them. I had read that eggs and larvae were laid in bedding and soil and only adults were present on the bird’s body. Still, it would take 41 days for a stick tight flea egg to mature to adulthood. I had plans to keep the rooster in a dog crate in the house with me and the two dogs for 41 days, until i knew i wasnt introducing new ailments to my chickens like the white settlers brought small pox to the native americans. I wasnt sure if i was going to make it 41 days with a rooster in the house but for the sake of generations of hens health i had to try.
Upon acquiring Buddy i was immediately impressed. He didnt like to be chased and picked up but once picked up he just sat there like a football and quit fighting until you put him down. He was quiet the whole ride back and only squawked when someone opened the trunk. He would sometimes sooth if you talked to him and cock his head as if listening or trying to figure you out, and if he could get away rather than face you, he would. He was escape over fight. This was a good sign. I needed him not to try to kill me upon sight every day like the old rooster years ago. I made a conscious effort not to force anything or provoke him in any way, allowing him to move away from me when uncomfortable. I didnt want to corner him into putting his dukes up and get him aggressive.
The first night with us, Buddy wouldnt eat. He just sat. I think he was scared. But, his previous owner told me he was days from being culled in a kill pen with roosters that did get culled, so the life i had designed for him here with his little flock of soon to be hens seemed a much better option for him than certain death in mason. I decided he’d settle in soon enough. At night, he didnt crow, so in the beginning the dogs liked him and guarded Buddy by sleeping near his crate. They sniffed him through the bars and he looked at them. He would just sort of slump over towards the ground and go to sleep.
I give my chickens ful-o-pep 9779 scratch. I do that because theres ingredients in the scratch that act as a natural dewormer, plentry of vitamins, ingredients to support gut health, enough calcium to keep their shells hard, and their feathers are always a rich, vibrant, and shiny color. They always look really healthy when on 9779. Also i can leave it out and rather than eat to obesity they eat until full and then leave the rest for tomorrow. I have tried other feed in the past because they dont crack the corn enough and the chickens discard and waste it. Every other feed i tried made their feathers dull and their egg shells brittle. Everyone who sees my chickens remarks how shiny and beautiful their feathers are. Its the 9779. Its damn good feed. Well, theres only two feed stores in the hill country that carry it. One is in bandera and the other is in fredericksburg. So i went to the feed store i usually go to in fredericksburg and tried to buy more 9779 when i still had a bag left. They said they were out of 9779 but were getting a new truck on wednesday or thursday and i could call and see if there was any on that truck. I waited until wednesday rolled around. So, a week into my last bag of feed i call to see if they have any 9779 or if they’re getting the truck thursday and will have it a day later. As it turned out, they got the truck, but they did not receive any 9779 on it. When would they be getting more 9779? They said they had another truck coming monday, and i could call in 5 days and see if there was any 9779 on that truck. This wasnt an option for me because at best i had enough feed to make it through Saturday evening, not Monday. If chickens dont have feed, they start eating the eggs and the bedding…its best to keep them stocked with scratch. I asked what the closest thing to ful-o-pep 9779 was…maybe i could buy a bag of that to hold me over…..but feed is sold in 50 lb bags…no less. I didnt want 50 lbs of a scratch i didnt want. Then i heard the brand they recommended. They said, “the closest thing would be our p***** scratch. I was angry with p***** and had been for years. I had both my dogs on a very good all natural dog food called redford naturals. They were on the brown rice and salmon formula. One of my dogs had lived to a ripe age and neither had ever had cancer, tumors, or other major health problems. The food kept their coats shiny and had a lot of ingredients i was happy with. It was also pretty pricey, but it was worth the money to add years to my dogs life and not lose them early to cancer. All my childhood dogs had cancer and every friend with dogs i have known in adulthood has had at least one dog die of cancer. A lot of times, the food they are eating has cancer causing ingredients in it. So i made a point to do my research and put my dogs on redford naturals, the brand i settled on. And i saw the results with my own eyes. I took the dogs to san antonio to get vaccinated when i needed to board them for a trip out of state. The vet that saw them mentioned that if i didnt already have my dogs on p***** i needed to put them on p*****. I thought it was a random comment but i just politely informed her that i had already selected a food for my dogs, a lot of thought went into picking it, and i was happy with the results. This vet then produced a propaganda pamphlet similar to one a political candidate would put out against their running opponent. It was a smear campaign against other dog food brands highlighting p***** as the only healthy option for dog owners who care about the longevity of their pets to choose. I flat out asked her, “does this vet office get some kind of kick back or benefit from peddling p***** to their customers?” She said that her own dogs were on p***** and that it was the vet recommended healthiest option. I told her she could say sentences until the cows come home, it wouldnt make me believe the statements were true just because she wore a white coat. There are much healthier and as a result more expensive dog foods on the market than p*****, including raw meat patties or human grade whole grain, veggie, and meat foods such as the farmers dog. You cant tell me you think p***** kibble is healthier for your dog than human grade rice, veg, and meat. The vet then doubled down and told me that i was killing my dogs and shortening their lives because i refused to switch them from redford naturals to p***** dog kibble because studies had shown that grain free dog food actually causes cancer in dogs because dogs need grain. I actually laughed at her and said, “okay, well now i know im not taking any of your advice because clearly you are either brainwashed or just motivated because dogs are descendant from wolves, who literally lived exclusively on meat, and they didnt die off as a species because humans werent around to feed them wheat, rice, or barley. They did what wolves do; they hunted other animals. You dont see a whole bunch of wolves dropping dead in their tracks because of lack of grain do you? They’re not over there in alaska going, ‘if only we had some bread we could live 5 more years’…”. I told her that she had shown me her level of intelligence and listening skills right there because brown rice is a grain and the food she was adamant was going to kill my dogs young because it was ‘grain free’ was the brown rice and salmon formula of redford naturals. I told her rice is gluten free but not grain free and her little study regarded grain free feeds said nothing about whether the grains should have gluten, only that dogs needed grains; and i dont believe the results of the study anyways because it listed the brands that are the cheapest as the healthiest and all the super expensive healthy brands as the worst for your dogs health and i feel like one ought to use their brain and eyeballs first rather than just trust what was written. Organic chicken breast is going to give your dog cancer less than chicken byproduct would. If there are ingredients you’ve never heard of and cant pronounce, trust and believe they are more harmful than blueberries and carrots. Its binding agents, chemicals, and byproducts that shorten dogs’ lives. You want a food with ingredients you recognize. I told her my dogs were getting rice so even by her theory, they should be fine. She told me that she couldnt make me make the right decision for my dogs but that if i loved them i should take the p***** pamphlet with me and try to think about it and realize i had been brainwashed by the healthy dog food brands and wasnt able to think clearly. I asked her one more time, “how much do you get paid when yall sell someone p*****?” She told me i was mistaken and there was no special relationship between her veterinary office and p*****. I left that veterinary office so angry at that vet because p***** is a well known and well liked affordable mainstream dog food and theres nothing wrong with that. But dont tell me redford naturals and farmers dog are more likely to cause health problems in dogs. Those are brands geared and engineered towards preventing health problems in dogs through human grade or organic whole food ingredients. I felt some sort of way towards that brand after that because of the things that one veterinarian had said. And i never bought anything from p***** again. I cant be sure what that vet’s deal was but i know she had some incentive to push it so hard. I would not buy their dog feed and i would not buy their chicken feed either if i could help it.
I called the feed store in bandera. They told me they had 4 bags of 9779, how many did i want? With double the chickens to feed now, i really needed 3 bags, but i didnt want to be greedy and take every last bit of 9779 in the hill country. I bought 3 bags over the phone and told them i could pick them up thursday, the following afternoon after work. They said they’d hold them for me and i just had to drive through the warehouse and pick them up, or i could come inside first if i preferred. i made sure that i finished my work early, left all my paperwork for the following day, and drove from fredericksburg to bandera after work before they closed at 5:30. I went in, asked hopefully after the three bags of 9779z. The first young lady knew nothing of such a sale and kept saying i wasnt in the computer. The older lady she went to go get came back and said, “No ma’am you are all paid up. You already purchased them. Your receipt is hanging up in the warehouse, you need only pull your car into the warehouse and they will load em up for you. As promised, i told you it would be easy.” I thanked her, very excited that i was one step closer to obtaining 3 whole bags of 9779. I pulled the car into the warehouse and i could have cried as i watched three men grab the signature red and tan 9779 bags. They put them in the trunk and i thanked them and drove on through. They were in a hurry to get to the truck behind me and the one behind it, there was just no tome to stop and chit chat, but if i had even for a moment caught and held one of the three men’s attention i would have told them that i was so happy to see those tan and red bags and they had really just loaded treasure into my trunk. 50 lb bags of red and tan treasure. I felt accomplished as i drove back in the opposite direction to my town. I had driven to a separate town a total of 7 times that day to get my work done, pick up the 9779, and get back to my town for the night. But it was worth it, because i had a trunk full of 9779z. As soon as i got back into my town i stopped on the side of the road, got out, went back there and opened the trunk. I just wanted to look at the 3 bags of 9779 stacked in the trunk. They were such a pretty sight. I was bringing home the bacon for my animals. I had gone and done what it took to get the 9779 that they ate, that would keep them shiny and healthy, and i was headed back carrying precious cargo. This is what the paycheck was for. To buy chickens, chicken feed, and chicken related items. I was just beaming as i pulled into the driveway and announced to the waiting dogs and chickens that we were successful in our operation and there were indeed 3 bags of 9779 in the trunk of the car at that very moment. I carried one to the shed and left the other two in the trunk for mouse proof storage. Sometimes you gotta drive to 7 towns in one day to get your work done and obtain your chicken feed, and that should tell you what a difference i see in my chickens when they are on it.
Theres been a couple spotted orb weavers hanging out making webs in the chicken pens but this is the first orb weaver that has made a web on the porch this year. It is a golden orb weaver. The light attracts praying mantises at night and the porch finally had to get sprayed with poison because the carpenter ants were claiming the house, the porch, and the well house. I hate doing it because it also kills the orb Weavers and pretty much everything else insect, but I had to. I waited as long as I could, but any longer and the ants would’ve owned the property, not me. The house is a glorified shed. It’s my shed, with appliances and electricity, and I love it, but it’s a shed. It’s probably why I don’t panic every time the carpenter ants make a bid for global takeover, but I had no choice it had to be done. I let it go on long enough. The ants were basically taking over the shower and the kitchen. I figured out where they were coming in, poisoned everything, plugged up the hole, and replaced the damaged piece of wood. There have been no further ants in the house since, and the outside of the house and the porch are now void of them. And this morning, this beautiful golden orb Weaver showed up. So I had to stop and have a chat with her about all the places that I’ve now poisoned that she cannot touch. I don’t know how long she’ll live, because I poisoned the house and the porch, and she’s made a Web right above all the poisoned stuff, but at least I gave her a heads up. I don’t know why I love The or Weaver so much. I guess they’re excellent neighbors. They eat grasshoppers and crickets, which I’m thrilled about because I hate them, because they eat all my plants. Also, if you spend a lot of time around a web and never do anything that seems threatening, an orb weaver will become comfortable with you, and if you start putting food into the web, it will run down there and get it right after you put it in and see if it’s something it wants to eat. If it is, it starts spinning it up and if it’s not it drops it from the web. They never launch themselves or jump on you. They just kind of hang out in their web. And they’re pretty. I guess out of all the spiders Ive seen my instincts dont set off an alarm and tell me danger danger when I see an orb Weaver. I’ve been living here seven years now and I’ve kind of run out of Viking names to give the spiders. So I settled on a Japanese warrior name. Nakano. She is a beautiful specimen.
One of the patients at work has head tremors and every time her head jerks her earrings fly off. She asked me if i could put it back in and i told her i had a better idea. Lets make you some earring backs. I went to the office and asked for two pencils. The receptionist gave them to me.
I used my box cutter to remove the erasers.
Then i used the point of a pin to make a hole through the middle of each one.
Finally i put her earrings back into her earring holes and then pushed the little eraser onto the back of each dangly earring. Her head tremored, the earrings swung, the eraser backs did their job, and nothing fell out. a week later she is still using them. Where there is a will, there is a way.
After several stomach infections and nearly a year of not being able to eat anything other than fruit, cucumber, and water without aggravating bleeding ulcers and messing up my digestion further, losing 18 lbs and wasting some muscle…after spending so many thousands of dollars at the naturopath in order to fix me so i could eat food again…he had two main suggestions for how not to get further stomach infections that i couldnt fight off with my auto-immune disorder and the other disorder i was born with that affects my liver and digestion. He said to stop drinking raw well water and stop eating rare meat. The water was an easy fix. I just boil it before consumption. The meat thing was more complicated. Though it is true wild meat is not processed and therefore may contain parasites or bacteria…i tried cooking it to death and you know what it becomes? A rubbery hockey puck with no flavor. I gave up wild game for a year. But, my body feels better when i have it in my diet. Everyone worries so much about protein intake when it comes to vegans or vegetarians. They’re worrying needlessly. Beans and rice can provide plenty of protein. What you end up low on is creatine. You just cant beat the feeling in my joints after eating deer meat or the capacity to work out without 5 days of muscle aches afterwards. This year a coworker offered me a back loin from a deer he killed and i politely declined, at which point they all wanted to know why i wasnt eating deer meat anymore and one of my coworkers then said, “why dont you just put it in a foil pouch and cook it at 250 degrees for 3 hours?” He said it would be fall apart tender like pulled pork but thoroughly cooked. Well, i decided to try it and if it went well i’d do the same thing with quail. I bought two packages of quail legs and a red deer loin from broken arrow ranch. I had to ship them to my coworker’s house in the town where i work because they wont ship to po boxes. Shipped it, she brought it to work, i put them in the mini fridge and then drove them home at the end of the work day. I put that deer loin in a foil package with a generous helping of vegan butter and celtic sea salt and cooked it on 250 for 3 hours. When i took it out of the oven and tried to cut it up it wasnt like pulled pork. It was softer. It just fell apart before the knife could even cut through it. It was soft, tender, meaty, and buttery. Axis is still my favorite, then red deer, then white tailed deer. It came out so good, i decided deer and quail were back on the menu for good! That deer meat could be a topping for brown rice or a spread on crackers. Its so soft. Its also delicious. The people around me can have their glp-1s and their fiber gummies, vitamin gummies, protein gummies, and hair health gummies to go with them. Im gonna eat real food. Let them have their shots, powders, pills, and gummies. More deer, fish, and quail for me.
