Archive for May 2021
Most Rewarding
Planting trees is one of my favorite accomplishments. Yesterday, we transplanted a young pine tree that had unexpectedly sprouted near our front walkway where it had no room to grow into a full-size tree. There was a spot down by the driveway near the road where I had just removed a dead tree, so we chose that spot for the relocation.
This is another of the two-for-one tasks I am most fond of because we have removed a tree from a spot where it didn’t belong and we gained a new tree in a location that had just lost one.
Instead of both areas nagging at me every time I pass by them, each one now brings me new satisfaction.
Doubly rewarding!
Especially since the raccoon that I tried to chase from the tree out our front door reappeared Saturday evening. Two steps forward, one step back.
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Backup Plan
What have we done? Cyndie says she called me to ask if she should. I interpreted her call as informing me that she would. While in the vicinity of a known supply of new chicks, Cyndie stopped in to look and came away with twelve. Three each of four breeds, two we have experience with and two that are new to us.
Rhode Island Red, Barred Rock, Americana, & Black Brahma.
I was given about an hour to get the brooder set up and ready. No waiting for the Post Office to deliver, we were going to have twelve new chicks within a day!
The thing is, we still have twenty-two incubating eggs in our basement bathroom at the same time.
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A few days ago, we candled those eggs and saw little to inspire hope of success for our first ever attempt to hatch our own chicks. We heard about a new batch of chicks arriving at the Buffalo Country Store and began to think about the advantage of such simple access to already sexed pullets.
We figured it was just a passing thought though because Buffalo is such a long way away from where we live. Then, one of those messages from the universe popped up that seem hard to ignore. Cyndie discovered the location of a training session she would be co-leading placed her mere minutes away from Buffalo.
I didn’t immediately say she shouldn’t go through with the purchase, but it did feel like we were making a hasty decision. To allay my concerns, we agreed to move up our next check of the incubating eggs to update that situation. If there were few signs of progress, our backup plan of buying the chicks would seem less impetuous.
My concerns were not allayed. While the first two eggs we happened to check showed little visible difference from a few days earlier, about twenty others revealed successfully developing veins and other detectable features. Multiple times the dark spot of an eye could be seen. It appears we have a lot more viable eggs than we realized.
It’s quite possible we could end up needing a new backup plan to solve how we will house two different batches of chicks hatched several weeks apart.
I guess this is one way to deal with large losses to predator pressures. Increase supply until it outpaces demand?
If ever there was a time to heed the adage of not counting chickens before they hatch, we’ll deal with the next reality when it arrives. But the possibilities have us marveling over how much things can change in surprisingly short spans of time.
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Mostly Calm
Life for our new horses has settled noticeably into a mostly calm satisfaction with their situation. I think enough days have passed that they are getting the sense these fields are theirs to graze and we are looking after their best interests.
Yesterday morning the temperature tip-toed around the freezing point but the clear sunshine warmed things quickly. The herd was serene and polite as I set out pans of their feed rations, which is an improvement over previous occasions. Mix is the mare who has shown the most aggressive outbursts when food service is pending, but we have taken to adding a temporarily closed gate to discourage unnecessary rambunctiousness.
It appears to be helping.
After dinner last night, Cyndie and I walked out to spend time with the herd. They were mostly over the hill out on the hayfield but Mix always shows a keen awareness of our presence and suddenly bolted into a sprint toward us. Cyndie stood tall but at the last minute repositioned just enough to assure Mix wouldn’t just run her over. The mare slowed a bit, avoiding Cyndie, and continued on toward me a few yards beyond. She stopped a few feet away from me as I gestured my desired boundary.
Then Mix closed the distance to bring her nose up to mine. It feels like such a special sign when a horse-human relationship begins to happen. In general, these four rescues have been slow to show much love for us. They haven’t even shown a lot of love for each other.
Earlier, around mid-day, I found Swings and Mix relaxing together in such close proximity to each other that it is hard to imagine it as revealing anything but a mutually nurturing relationship displayed.
Every time I see the horses allowing others to get in their space without feeling a need to put their ears back to signal dissatisfaction is an encouraging sign. We are seeing enough progress toward this calm coexistence among the herd and between them and us that our hopes are high for achieving our desires of helping them live out their time with us as healthily and happily as possible.
In the meantime, mostly calm is a welcome start.
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Wandering Around
There are days when I step outside in the morning to walk Delilah without having any idea what will command my attention for the rest of the day, but something always does. There are just as many times, maybe even more, when I set out to write something without having any idea what point I hope to make. Of course, here’s a good idea. Have a point.
“He’s got a point there!”
That is a mashup of Steve Martin’s character, Neal Page, ranting at Del Griffith the shower curtain ring salesman in “Planes, Trains, & Automobiles” combined with a line from Harry Nilsson’s animated movie, “The Point.” Both tremendously worthy works of film entertainment.
I would say that my great affection for those two movies reveals something about the way my mind works.
It’s probably a bit of a stretch to say it works when mostly my mind tends to just wander around. It’s like a sticky sponge that gladly picks up whatever happens to reach my eyes and ears.
Last weekend I melodically vocalized that I was getting silverware and it came out sounding like I was singing “Silver Bells.” By the end of the meal, as I was picking up placemats from the table on the deck, I caught myself humming some other Christmas song. I’ve since forgotten which one but at the time it was startling for being such an odd thing to be contemplating.
It would seem likely that the first song could have triggered the second, but still… What the heck?
Cyndie was out overnight last night, on the road for a consulting gig, leaving Delilah and me on our own to keep each other occupied. Delilah did her share by alerting to a raccoon climbing down a tree off the backyard well before yesterday even started to seem dusky outside. I grabbed my newest toy, a slingshot, and hustled out onto the deck to take potshots at the critter. I hope to make it feel completely unwelcome living so close to our house.
It made a hasty return to its apartment high in the upper limbs.
I am encouraged in my harassment efforts by apparent success on the other side of the house. Two days of flinging stones and steelies toward a young raccoon in a tree out our front door have resulted in zero sightings since. That doesn’t necessarily mean it left entirely, but at least it stopped coming out before dark.
The masked bandit would pop its head out and watch the world for a while before climbing out on the big branch to take a tongue-bath in preparation for its night of adventures. I think it didn’t like suddenly becoming the target of my aiming practice.
That was totally the point. I’m hoping he or she received the message I was sending.
It will be very satisfying if they are now off wandering around the woods looking for a quieter neighborhood with friendlier neighbors.
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Learning Again
It’s another first for us. Last night, on day-7, we “candled” our incubating chicken eggs. Honestly, I had no idea what we were going to see. I’ve left the research up to Cyndie. I was under the impression we would see blood vessels growing. That’s about the extent of my expectations.
The first thing I noticed was that it is hard to see through the dark shells. We almost always were able to detect some definition of a darker area and a noticeably lighter air cell, but rarely perceived actual veins. That can’t be taken to mean there weren’t any there, just that we couldn’t see them.
I didn’t know how much any of this really mattered until learning that an incubated egg that isn’t growing a chick will instead grow bacteria and eventually burst or even explode into a stinky mess.
We suddenly have a new incentive to learn how to correctly interpret what the bright light reveals inside the shell.
I took this picture of one of two odd ones that appear to be more porous than all the others. At least this made it easier to see inside. The darker portion on that egg is much, much smaller than all the others, whatever that might indicate.
Cyndie marked all the eggs with a checkmark or a question mark so we can compare progress the next time we try out our candling skills. Next week.
Hopefully, well before any bad ones threaten to erupt. I really don’t want to learn about that experience first hand.
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Push Pull
The world is in the midst of a bizarre pandemic contrast of simultaneous good progress and bad outcomes. The calamity of skyrocketing cases that are overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums in India has been widely reported at the same time we hear about travel opening up in the EU. In the US, states are ending mask mandates, and relaxing restrictions.
I heard a story on NPR about the lack of vaccines in the Philippines creating a massive crisis of surging cases. In Colombia, violent rioting has erupted, triggered by a proposed tax fix for their pandemic-battered economy.
Things seem to be getting better and worse all at the same time. I suspect there will be a time lag of ramifications that continue to appear for quite some time.
The US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, made a good point advising that people not focus so specifically on the percentage number of citizens vaccinated (be it 70% or 80%) toward achieving herd immunity. He pointed out that it doesn’t work as a switch when a specific percentage is achieved, suddenly ending transmission.
Realistically, there will be a gradient of improvement, one we appear to be seeing early hints of locally. It feels odd to be enjoying the reduced pressure to isolate when other parts of the world sound like they are getting so much worse.
Causes a real push-pull on the senses.
I suppose it’s not unlike a lot of things in life where good things and bad are in perpetual interplay.
While our horses are showing good signs of becoming more comfortable with their situation here, Cyndie needed to call for the vet yesterday to check on Light who appears to have a possible sinus infection. While he was here, Cyndie was able to confirm our suspicions about Swings suffering from a bout of rain rot, a skin infection.
A little odd that they both seem to have an infection at the same time, but we are told they aren’t related.
I hope they don’t tell us the horses should be wearing masks.
You can bet that would be a real push/pull.
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Resonance
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I was trying to find an idea somewhere
looking under the stacks of accumulated papers
among the shoes on the floor in the closet
mixed among the randomly sorted silverware in the drawer
might as well look in the junk drawer, too, while I was at it
in the basement room I otherwise never visit
hidden in plain sight in the kitchen refrigerator upstairs
on the list of things we always intend to do someday
tucked in one of the many books I never get around to finishing
lost in the collection of well-used dog toys that no longer excite
buried in the saved emails from more than a decade back
deep in a lifetime of fading memories
or a line of some lyrics from every single song
from the shapes and colors of each different day’s clouds
in the sounds out the window of so many birds and frogs
Eeeee eeee Eee EEE eee eee eeep
but the last p is silent
just a closing of the lips without escaping any air
in the blades of green grass that invisibly grow so dang fast
in the absence of chickens and the happiness they once cast
I looked toward the horses finding too much there to grasp
on the overflowing shelves of junk in the shop and adjacent garage
along the trails through our woods and the paths around our fields
in the silence when I notice it and pause for a moment just to hear
an idea that feels a little different than the ones already formed
wrapped up in the whacky climate calamity continually playing out
publicly flaunted prejudices propagating like a raging contagion
pernicious social networks emanating a sickly stench
mindless rampant greed with its selfish intent
all battling the effervescent aromas spring hope brings once again
the voluntary charity bursting forth from entrepreneurial brilliant minds
the love most people are conveying from the goodness of their hearts
the science on display in helicopters flying around on Mars
an idea so much bigger than some guy’s stupid big lie
one that could actually make universal sense
except it’s obviously deeper than mere words can explain
communicating clearly and simply to each separate person’s mind
through fields of heart energy and the wisdom living in our guts
an idea that is more like a sound
one our instincts recognize
one we together can amplify
one that is love in resonance
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Slowly Becoming
We sat beside one of the gates to the large paddock with friends yesterday afternoon and looked in on the four horses as they grazed. They showed awareness of our presence, but little in the way of interest in interacting with us. There have been enough other interactions where they chose to walk near us as we stroll around the perimeter of their pastures that we sense the early hints of a relationship between us.
In the weeks they have been here we have become increasingly aware of the differences between these horses and our previous herd of four well-loved Arabians.
One issue that Mix is experiencing is food aggressive behavior around feeding time that could easily be a relic of being starved sometime in her past.
Our old herd would commonly show up at a gate for social interaction and treats when people would visit. These mares show no sense whatsoever of this concept of “treats.” It’s a little sad to imagine the neglect they might have endured that has left them so uninterested in what humans might have to offer.
I suspect that too much of their experience with people in the last half of their lives has been negative.
These rescued Thoroughbreds have now become familiar with all the borders of their new confines and appear more than satisfied with the accommodations. They seem to understand that we clean up after them and serve pans of feed pellets for supplemental nutrition. Also, they now sense we aren’t a threat, but I don’t know that they are interested in making any hasty leap toward framing us as completely trustworthy.
While I was standing in the field among them around nap time the other day and three of them decided to lie down, I pulled out my camera to record the moment. While I was filming Light and Swings in front of me, I started hearing some strange sounds from behind me.
When I turned around to check, I found Mia’s snout was resting on the ground and it was causing a sort of whistle on her inhale, and then she snorted upon exhale. She was sleeping so soundly, she was snoring!
I took that as a great sign she was thoroughly comfortable with her surroundings and also, my benign presence in the middle of all of them.
We are slowly becoming connected to this herd and they are slowly becoming adjusted to us and our fields.
I anticipate this summer will provide plenty of opportunities to use idle time to continue deepening our precious connections.
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Two Minutes
It sure seemed like the fastest two minutes. Yesterday afternoon, Cyndie and I watched the Kentucky Derby with a new perspective. We have four horses living with us now who started their lives as racehorses but went on to become neglected and ultimately taken on by a rescue organization.
Ultimately, we are not supportive of the breeding of animals for the purpose of racing them for a few years. At the same time, we recognize the fascination with the power and speed of Thoroughbreds.
The Derby is referred to as “the most exciting two minutes in sports.” The 2021 winner was “Medina Spirit” with a time of 2:01.02.
Check out the images posted on kentuckyderby.com. The beauty and athleticism are mesmerizing.
It’s intoxicating. Until we consider the rest of the lives of all the horses at all the racetracks around the world.
We are giving our hearts to four rescued Thoroughbreds with the hope of allowing them to reclaim their wholeness as equine beings, living safely and comfortably for the rest of their lives.
If they choose to run, it’s a brilliant spectacle. Given their own choice on our property, it has never come close to lasting two minutes at an all-out sprint.
We’ll probably watch the next two Triple Crown races to see what transpires, but it is with conflicted hearts. After yesterday’s race, we walked out into the field with our four Thoroughbreds to recalibrate. There was nothing but walking and grazing happening, but they were no less impressive creatures.
Zodiacal Light, Pleasant Mix, The Yellow Sheet [Mia], and Gate Swinger are all champions in our eyes.
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Relative Something 