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.
They brought a porcupine to see the patients and everyone wanted to pet that. No one wanted to hold Charlie the Boa Constrictor as these were mostly retired farmers who had spent their lives dealing with rattlesnakes. They didnt want anything to do with poor Charlie so i held him while everyone petted the porcupine. I dont have a problem with non venomous snakes unless they start eating my eggs or my chickens. Something’s got to eat the field mice and it cant be cats cuz the coyotes ate them all.
One day i went outside and found an 8 foot snake skin hanging from the top of the pullet pen. I had never seen a snake that long and made a note that there was a rather large snake in the area. Now, rat snakes like to climb up high to shed their skins and so it seemed based on the location of the shed that most likely i was living with a very large rat snake nearby.
A month went by and i assumed the snake had just passed through and moved on. I did think it was strange that the shed was found in the pullet pen vs the chicken pen because olive was still laying eggs in the chicken pen and the pullets hadnt started laying yet, so seemingly he picked the wrong pen. As it would turn out, the pullets had started laying a month early and i just didnt know because this rat snake had been eating every single egg. One night i heard the chickens going ballistic. They would not load up. I went outside with the head lamp and the first thing i saw was a big wavy branch that had somehow fallen on the top and side of the pullet pen. As i went to remove the branch i realized, it was actually not a branch. It was an 8 foot mostly gray but patterned rat snake! It was wound around and through the rectangles on the side of the chicken pen. I jumped back and said, “wo! Not a branch!” The chickens were like, “no shit sherlock!” I went inside and loaded the gun but of course, by the time i got back outside, it was gone. I looked for it for a while, to no avail. This continued for weeks until i just started leaving the gun loaded, and then taking it with me to lock up the chicken coop and pen, just in case i saw it. Every day while i was at work it would eat the eggs. So i put some ceramic eggs in there hoping he’d break his insides trying to squish them. Well, he could tell the ceramic eggs were bigger than the pullet eggs and he ate the real eggs and left the ceramic eggs alone.
Up until this point i had only really dealt with garter snakes and rattlesnakes. garter snakes didnt eat eggs. They also didnt pay me much mind. They were only interested in staying out of my way and being left alone. Rattlesnakes coiled and watched me from a distance, waiting for me to go away. A rat snake is much smarter and more active than these snakes. They are fast moving and they dont usually coil or fold over on themselves. They’ll be stretched out in a long line. Harder to shoot. But it didnt stop me trying. The main thing i noticed about this rat snake is that it never would sit still. As soon as i left to get the gun or bullets it was on the move. One morning i had it in my sights but it was at the top of the pen near its shed again. So, i couldnt shoot it full of rat shot without blowing holes in the tarp roof. The same thing happened when i found it half under the coop and half exposed. It was inches from the chickens. I couldnt use rat shot on it because it would spray and get some of the chickens standing beside it. Then the day came where it was folded over on itself behind the chicken coop in between two pieces of the old chicken coop i had put there to deter the birds from getting stuck behind the coop. It was perfect. All the chickens were put up. He was right where i wanted him between two pieces of metal and folded over on himself. I went and got the gun with the rat shot already loaded and tried to shoot him. The gun seemed to jam. It is a bolt action rifle. I should have been able to access one of the five bullets i had put in the little clip and then fire. But i couldnt complete the process. I looked to see why. The rat shot bullet was jammed diagonally. I took it out and loaded another. Same thing. Jammed diagonally. Meanwhile the snake is now poking its head out and smelling the air, bobbing his head around trying to see what im doing. He’s starting to move. I desperately want to shoot him, but i cant because no rat shot bullets will get into the little tunnel properly (forgive me….didnt grow up with guns….dont have the proper vocabulary to describe what’s going on.). They keep jamming diagonally. So, the rat shot bullets are slightly wider than the plain 22 bullets. They are a hollow tube that the guy at the gun show filled with stuff and crimped shut. Home made rat shot. I had not yet realized that something about the size, shape, or weight of these bullets…they were not loading smoothly into the little tunnel. They were getting stuck diagonally on the way in. I shot a test bullet into the ground. It actually fired. Now i thought i was ready to shoot the snake and upon trying to rack another bullet again, it got stuck. I fiddled and struggled to free the diagonal bullets and lead them again. Finally i aimed the end of the rifled right at the rat snake folded on itself, the end of the rifle basically in it. I heard the “pop” when i pulled the trigger. This bullet did not get stuck but it did not sound as loud as it did when i fired into the ground either. I saw no blood, though the snake began moving quickly the moment i heard the pop. I assumed i somehow missed him because i saw no blood. How could i miss a snake with the end of the rifle basically touching it?! I figured it must have malfunctioned again but when i looked in to find any stuck diagonal bullets the tunnel was empty. The bullet had fired. So why did it sound only half as loud as it should and why was there no blood? I decided i was done with rat shot once and for all and went to the house to get real bullets. I loaded 5 and rushed back outside with the rifle and the head lamp. This hunt was botched in so many ways but i just kept thinking, “i dont care how sloppy this process ends up being, as long as i get him!” Well, he was gone.
Pretty soon i started getting eggs so i knew he wasnt coming while i was at work, but everyone said, “oh you didnt kill him? He’ll be back.” Someone suggested a glue trap. I didnt want to have to put dawn dish soap on feathers and get large or small birds out of the traps so i chose only to put them out at night. The field mice said heck no. The snakes did not try it out. However, insects did. I put the glue trap right behind the coop where i had seen the big old rat snake most. But he was never on it when i woke up and went to go check. One morning before dawn i went out there and found that there were about 20 bugs trapped in the glue. Most of the bugs were pains in my asses so i kind of said good riddens and set the trap out again every night. Well, one morning i found half the whole trap covered in dirt and swarming with ants cutting up and harvesting the trapped insects piece by piece and hauling them underground. The ants were not stuck in the glue trap because they had cleverly assessed that the trap was sticky and thrown an impressive amount of dirt granules over 50 percent of the trap to render it “not sticky” in places where they wished to stand and travel. I quickly grabbed it and threw it closed and into the fire pit (not lit) before too many of them could climb my hand and bite me. I left it there a couple weeks before throwing it out in the weekly trash but vowed that i was done with glue traps on account of being outsmarted by ants and having the trap rendered useless by insects the size of a sesame seed. I never saw the rat snake again. I thought id finally get some eggs. Nutmeg had a different plan. Nutmeg wanted to see what it was the snake found so enticing about her and her sisters’ eggs. So she tasted one. She decided the snake was onto something and that’s how nutmeg became an avid egg eater. She grew fat on the eggs. She ate every last one of them for a week. I had all these chickens and was getting zero eggs. I was worried she’d peak her sisters’ interest and teach the others. I had to do something. She would follow me into the coop to collect and be right wherever i was, pecking at anything i touched. Thats how i knew it was her and not the others. Nutmeg was a large, bold, high ranking chicken amongst her little group. I needed to break her of this habit or separate her from the others before they learned. I put extra ceramic eggs in the nesting boxes hoping she’d peck them and hurt her beak, thus breaking her of the habit. However, just like the snake, she knew the real eggs were about half the size of the ceramic ones and just avoided them. Ultimately i made the decision that instead of culling her i’d put her with the menopausal ladies in the retirement pen. I thought at least that would save me the trauma of having to kill another chicken i raised by hand from 1 day old and if by chance she ever grew out of it or missed one here or there i might get an occasional egg out of her in the future. I purposefully threw her into the older hens flock without any pre-introduction, hoping they’d bully her a bit and force her to the bottom of the totem pole. She was already attacking me upon entry of the pullet pen as if she were a rooster and she was way too bold about eating eggs. She needed taken down a peg. A week later, it became evident that the plan worked better than i could have hoped. The older hens found this new young bird in their pen with an attitude problem and an ego and a half. She waltzed in there with her chest puffed up, cocking her head and bluffing those older girls who took her straight to the ground and beat her up every time she squared up to one of them. Within a week she knew she was bottom of the totem pole. She didnt dare stay in the coop for longer than it took to lay her egg, which meant that every other day or so id find an egg in there. She also started doing a submissive squat in front of me whenever i entered the pen instead of flying at me, grabbing my skin in her beak, and twisting her head and thrashing about like a dog with its kill. She actually comes to me now and lets me pet her. So Nutmeg is in the menopausal hen pen learning humility. She will be there for the rest of her life even if she stops eating eggs. I cant risk putting her back because now that she’s not as bold about it, if ahe is still doing it or starts up again, i may not be able to tell who is doing it and needs separated. They all look pretty identical right now. Nana pudding and the rest of the chocolate orpingtons are in the pullet pen where i will put a rooster by february and see if i cant incubate some eggs and hatch chicks. Oh yeah, when i put Nutmeg in the menopausal hen pen i put Sumac over in the pullet pen as a trade. See, one day Sumac laid an egg and i realized Sumac was really more like a Sue…..she was not going to grow tail feathers and start crowing….she simply had stunted tail feather growth when they were young pullets but she was 100 percent a hen….identified by the day she laid an egg. Its easier to tell with some breeds than others. There are things to look for in the feather growth, but there are always exceptions and no matter how non existent the tail feathers were in comparison to her sisters at teenage pullet age…when she lays an egg, its time to admit you were wrong, rename her, and start shopping for a rooster on the county chicken facebook page.
I found myself rather disenchanted with humanity lately. I ask the question “what the **** does God see in humans?” often but this past week i really couldnt see anything redeemable at all. I do think it has to do with the fact that im surrounded by a lot of people who are going through something right now and hurt people hurt people.
Last week was the hardest one ive had in a long time in terms of disenchantment with humanity. And right when i was at my wits end God showed me the opposite of what i was looking at all week. He showed me people helping and supporting other people. I needed that. He also showed me two other people that see what i see. Their eyes behold what im looking at and their brains came to the same conclusion i did so im not crazy….
Today i saw an ad for a sweatshirt that said something like, “need prayer? Tap my shoulder. We’ll bring it to God together…” im an introvert who discovered the bible at 25 years of age, not infancy. So, the fact that im not a biblical scholar paired with the fact that im an introvert who dislikes the idea of drawing people towards oneself purposefully, has always prevented me from wearing one of those kinds of shirts, but i find ability for prayer doesnt come from word for word recitation of the bible…it comes from the overall understanding of Jesus’ heart and the messages conveyed through the bible. it is better to get the gist of something and be able to apply it to daily life than be able to rattle off exact passages and numbers of verses word for word. I pray daily by myself in my house and occasionally with others when they ask me to say grace at a table or my patient who is dying asks me to pray while they are either facing their diagnosis or actively passing. I have prayed with others before but always at their request and initiation. To wear a shirt that would draw others to me would be very out of character for me. But i lost faith in humanity last week…not like almost did or was kind of teetering on the edge…like i LOST all hope and faith in humanity. I asked that question “what the **** does God see in humans?” again and this time the answer i came up with was “not a **** thing. Thats probably why we’re steadily headed for self destruction at this point. He probably took a look down here, went ‘shit yall have strayed so damn far from noah…i think we’re done with the human experiment…im probably gonna let yall kill each other off here shortly or program your little robots to do it for you, and then when yall are all perished i’ll come up with something besides humans and dinosaurs and see how that works out….’” God showed me a bunch of people being kind to each other, a bunch of people being reasonable, and he put me in a room with someone who took a look at what i was looking at and saw the same thing. Sometimes its tiring holding a differing opinion from all those around you but i was reminded in that moment of a saying written in my quotes book: “right is right even if nobody is doing it and wrong is wrong even if everybody is doing it.” I felt like this whole time i had been trying to help people and God put this sweatshirt in my path and said, “you want to help people? Here you go….”
I bought the sweatshirt. My neighbor who is an introvert running for school board says the way you know God is convicting you to do something is if its the last thing you would normally choose for yourself but you feel in your bones that you are supposed to do it.
I keep trying to get images of the hundreds of baby toads hopping around the property this month but they move so fast. They dont hold still while i focus the camera. The tree frogs do tend to hold still so i have more images of them. I did get one image of a large frog in the plant pot. I am used to seeing a numerous amount of baby toads each year, and this year is no different. However, sightings of tree frogs are usually sparse and this year they’re everywhere.
