Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Sick Chicken
We’ve got a sick bird. One of the adult hens, our Australorp. She was losing feathers and then slowly started to lag behind the others in every way. Eventually, we noticed the color was gone from her comb and wattle. Cyndie decided to isolate the hen and made a space in one of the stalls in the barn.
She turned on the heat lamp for the poor girl since there were no other hens around her for warmth.
Since we are enjoying a period of summery warm high temperatures during the daytime this week, Cyndie has been moving the hen outside during the day, either in the brooder or our broody breaker cage, keeping the hen isolated in hopes of protecting the others in case the ailment is contagious.
The primary treatment has been hydration, which the hen has been eager to receive. After a couple of days, the color of her wattle and comb started to improve. Yesterday, the hen appeared to be regaining some appetite. We are hopeful that whatever was ailing her will resolve itself without requiring any additional interventions.
During my commute home from work yesterday afternoon, Cyndie and I were chatting on the phone. She was outside with the chickens at the time and decided to let the Australorp free-range and mingle again. Cyndie offered the birds some treats out of the palm of her hand. She reported the Australorp had wandered off by herself to scratch in the dirt a short distance away.
While we were talking and Cyndie was providing a narration of the antics playing out, she excitedly described an apparent “emergency response drill” that suddenly occurred.
She had been feeding treats with all the chickens around, creating an understandable competition for best access. One of them made a sound and in a blink, the birds all vanished into the trees. Cyndie didn’t notice anything that might have triggered the need to hide.
Then Rocky came out to take advantage of unfettered access to the treats she had been offering.
Cyndie reported it gave the distinct impression the cockerel had triggered the call for everyone to take cover so he could eliminate the competition and have a moment to himself at the treat trough. If that was truly the case, he has my admiration.
Last night, when Cyndie went out to secure the chicken coop for the evening, the Australorp was waiting on the driveway. Guess she wasn’t ready to rejoin the others yet. Cyndie took her back to the barn for another night.
Seems we might need to put some effort into merging her back into the flock when the time is right.
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Lucky Balance
First off, you should know that by simply bringing up this subject, I am totally jinxing the longevity of this latest installation of balanced rocks, however, this one has already outlasted my wildest expectations.
You just never know how long any “sculpture” will last when it comes to the unrehearsed balancing of random stones. This gem is perched on the stump of the most recently dispatched dead pine tree in the yard just beyond the front door of our house.
I was walking past the stump on some unrelated task one day when inspiration struck. I checked the nearby grove of trees for a big enough rock to make a good impression. I needed one that was also small enough that I could still lift it. I rolled it into position, which wasn’t easy at all because as you can see it was not of a rolling shape.
With some serious grunting and an unwise risk to my back, I finessed the beast upwards to the top of the stump. Then I headed to the rocks strewn about the landscaping around the house in search of a suitable size and shape for the upper balance.
It stood up in place with minimal coaxing. Balance was achieved so simply, I figured it might not last very long. Now, over three weeks later, it has survived the heavy snowfall, several days of high winds, a couple nights of significant freeze, and this week, record heat.
I got lucky.
Sometimes, it’s the ones I put in the least effort to accomplish that end up having the greatest longevity.
But not always.
There is one little set of three rocks that I assembled in the woods along our perimeter trail that is collapsed almost every time I walk by.
The difference is subtle to the point of being beyond my level of mastery.
Here’s hoping the ones in our front yard, pictured above, are unaware of what I’ve just written about them.
I am rather fond of seeing how they look from different perspectives as I walk past at all times of the day or night.
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Looking Forward
I am looking forward to the sun setting once and for all on unethical leadership,
on hidden financial arrangements of people in government,
on blatant disinformation and deliberate distortion of reality,
on mocking in any form by someone holding office,
on bullying, period,
on misogyny,
on racism,
white supremacy,
homophobia,
xenophobia,
on holier than thou hypocrisies,
on gaslighting,
on selfish disdain for the real suffering of others,
on the belittling of science and those who hold degreed expertise,
on the denial of climate science and the impact of industrialization,
on juvenile petty behavior,
on misuse of funds, privileges, technologies, information,
on complete disregard for protocols,
on profiteering, scamming, swindling, nepotism and cronyism,
on corruption in any form in the United States government.
Why, why would anyone ever support any of that, let alone all of it in one administration over four short years?
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Drying Firewood
For the record, drying firewood shrinks. I have yet to devise a stacking system that stays upright for a full year of shrinking. First, it starts to lean, and then it pushes against an adjacent stack. Eventually, they tend to topple over into a scrambled pile of split logs. I have resigned myself to simply climbing in there to pile firewood back into an orderly stack, regardless the odds it would probably just tip over again later.
I used to strive to push the stacks back into balance before they tipped over, but now I accept they are going to lean. My odds of causing it to tip over the other direction by pushing it upright are high enough I have forced myself to get over being annoyed with how it looks and just leave it be.
Yesterday, we moved half of a stack of the oldest logs onto the wood rack on our deck for premium proximity to the fireplace. It’s interesting to be handling wood that I stacked two years ago. In that amount of time, some impressive rodent nests get built, probably chipmunks. It would be reasonable to assume the critter activity in the stacks contributes to destabilization.
As I am splitting logs to refill the right side of the woodshed, it occurs to me that I could just toss them all into a big pile and forego the tippy stacks.
Why is that such a difficult decision for me?
- I believe it wastes less space to stack the wood tightly.
- I can better gauge how much firewood there is when it is stacked.
- I can easily tell how long each stack has been drying.
- Stacks appeal to my sense of order.
At the same time, I know from past experience how much we use per winter season, so the volume of a pile filling one half of the woodshed would give us two years. I could stuff a jumbled pile to fill the space to a greater extent than I achieve with individual stacks.
Since I already started a new stack on the right side of the shed yesterday, I’m now thinking about doing a bit of both. I could put down a base layer of individual stacks to cover the space on the right half and then switch to just tossing split pieces on top of those short stacks.
If only I can convince myself to follow through with such a random-looking storage choice.
It would be something of a “can’t beat ’em, join ’em” solution of intentionally tumbled drying firewood.
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Kitty Homed
The result is in. Despite breaking Cyndie’s heart in handing off our little surprise visitor last week, the sweet kitty that peeked in our back door is now happily placed in a new home.
None of our neighbors reported missing a pet and our trusted pet-sitter, Anna, just happened to be looking for a kitty to fulfill the request of a friend. It was a match that fit seamlessly for all parties concerned.
One reply we received from a neighbor gave us pause. She texted, “Is this the first pet you’ve had abandoned on your property?”
We’ve been here eight years now, and this was a first. Her question implies it is something that happens with some regularity in the country. We are happy to have been spared this harsh reality of human behavior thus far.
Our attention is back on fifteen chickens who are busy learning how to deal with the increasingly wintery weather, as well as their own pecking order. We feel lucky to have avoided any real violence from the aggressors, but they do assert their dominance as anticipated. Happily, the young ones are not looking defeated by it in the least. They continue to ever so slowly expand their comfort zone of free-ranging our land.
In this time of the exploding COVID-19 cases, take advantage of the healthy excuse to stay home and hug your pets.
Except for free-ranging chickens. They aren’t so fond of that hugging thing.
Just throw them some scratch or mealworms and they’ll feel truly loved.
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Figuring Out
The human race has made it this far. Maybe things will change for the better if enough people overcome fear, selfish greed, and exclusionary dogma to embrace love for all others equally. Think about it.
In the meantime, rational thinking must tolerate the rampant distribution of disinformation and innumerable groups of gullible people who allow themselves to believe any narrative that aligns with their versions of reality.
Long ago I became disturbed by ever-increasing reports of atrocities enacted by individuals who had themselves been abused. It was very obvious that those who had been harmed were eventually becoming offenders. Generations of this pattern were creating an expanding pyramid of misery.
This led me to visualize inverting that pyramid of dysfunction by breaking the patterns in some who could raise healthier children. With each generation, there would be fewer abusers and from the top down, the cone of an inverted dysfunction pyramid would be getting smaller with time. A reverse-pyramid scheme.
Of course, the opposite of that is the wonderful perspective of a pyramid of healthy loving people expanding with every generation.
I sought to break the chain of depression that I had inherited from my family tree and provide the knowledge and support for my children to recognize depression in themselves and those they love.
With the innovations of a world-wide internet and social media applications, the less rational portions of the human population have found a method to consolidate their numbers in frightening ways. I’m finding myself stumped for ideas to invert the pyramid of fear-based philosophies.
How much of my loving them will influence a change of thought? Why doesn’t rational logic override conspiratorial fears? How will non-religious spirituality ever compete with entrenched dogma of so many rival sects?
Will our dog and our cat ever figure out how to peaceably get along?
From history, we know that civilizations collapse. There is no assurance that there will come a day when all people eventually come together into a healthy, compassionate, inclusive, and loving society. Maybe if robots are programmed to take over our governance. Although, I saw a curious report that an AI (artificial intelligence) controlled camera mistook a referee’s bald head for a soccer ball and followed it for the remainder of a match.
Based on the last four years of backlash to the US having elected a person of color to the highest office for the eight years previous, our democracy doesn’t appear to be the beacon of hope it was once purported to be. Capitalism doesn’t deserve very high marks either, given the insane disparity of wealth distribution and environmental destruction it has achieved.
If the US survives the outcome of our election on Tuesday, we will have a lot of work ahead of us to overcome animosities and nurture more love for others than ever before. Freedom may ring, but the world will be a much better place if it rings with due respect for all others.
Let’s expand love to more people in the world than any generation before us ever achieved.
Amen.
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Scrambled Fiction
It wasn’t dark, or stormy, or even night, but that didn’t stop the hero from completing his appointed rounds. He was trying to figure out how to test his Halloween costume before the big night. It was the Emperor’s New Clothes, but would it work with a COVID mask? Probably wouldn’t matter. None of the classic costume houses were able to fulfill his request. Nobody would admit they couldn’t see the fabric.
There were no reasons left to seek an alternative. Half the people in the city would be sheltering in place. The rest would be out pretending there is nothing to worry about under the rare second full moon of the month. The only reason any of them would notice the mysterious greedy bastards had locked up the computers in all the hospitals was because it was all over the news. Filtering out the endless barrage of political ads allowed a few other strands of news to trickle through.
Nobody pays attention to that stuff anymore. After years of ridiculous daily distractions from the misdirection machine obfuscating reality, the masses have grown numb. Their stamina has been sapped. In is out and up is down. It’s easier to just make shit up than bothering to figure out what is actually going on.
Humans could take a lesson from chickens. They don’t get distracted by things that don’t matter and they won’t believe anything that isn’t visible to their glaring side-eye stare. There is a certain strength of character reflected in that.
All that character probably helps them to avoid the Halloween candy so readily available during the month of October. Now, mealworms, that would be a different thing. No chicken in its right mind could pass up that treat.
Things are a little twisted when you need to wait for snow to melt in order to finish raking leaves. But twisted is the new normal, so why not? The point isn’t to figure it all out, after all, it is to simply have a point. Otherwise, it’s all pointless.
Watch out for that guy in the Emperor’s costume. Make sure his nose isn’t hanging over the top of his mask.
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Beautiful Views
Despite human industrial activity dumping carbon into the earth’s atmosphere for generations, grass and trees continue to jam carbon back into the soil. Imagine if we had enough forests and fields to reverse the changes our burning of fossil fuels has done to the atmosphere.
Thinking like that is more fun when gazing upon the beautiful views we enjoy than trying to wrap my head around the continuing damage that is being done every day, like driving my car for two hours a day during my 4-day workweek. Working from home on Fridays is a small token toward driving less.
We watched the NOVA episode, “Can We Cool the Planet?” on PBS last night. Seems reasonable to believe that we can cool the planet. The difficulty is whether or not humans will actually undertake the needed steps.
It certainly doesn’t hurt for individuals to strive to do their part, but the solution will require a collective global commitment. Based on the history of the human race, it is hard to picture how such a thing would even be possible.
Maybe an existential threat will be the difference that one day drives a coordinated response.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to plant trees and enjoy our lovely views.
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Peeping Kitty
Monday afternoon, leaning back in my favorite recliner, my eye sensed movement out on our deck. Was that a very large squirrel that just went past the glass door? Nope. Soon, a cute little kitten was peeping in at us with a look that strongly hinted at coming from one who preferred the indoors to the wintery temperatures this October has been serving up.
Cyndie stepped out on the deck to do a little grilling and soon showed up outside the door with that bundle of cute curled up in her hands.
It quickly turned into a rescue operation. Now we have a converted chick brooder tub housing the adorable visitor under temporary quarantine in the somewhat heated shop outbuilding.
According to Cyndie’s reports, the little bugger displayed a voracious appetite for foodstuffs offered. A post with photo was created for the online neighborhood group in search of a possible owner. Phone calls to immediately adjacent properties brought no positive identifications. It’s hard to picture this little one traveling over the large rural expanses beyond visible neighbors to reach our door, but we are guessing that is the situation.
Last night we received a reply from the wider online neighborhood saying, “Let me know if she needs a home,” so we have that solution awaiting the possibility nobody else shows up to report having lost her.
Meanwhile, although she says she is putting in a bold effort to not fall in love, I sense Cyndie is already past that point.
Pretty much saw it when she arrived at the deck door with the kitty curled up in her hands.
The resolution of this peeping kitty unexpectedly sheltering with us is unscripted. Feel free to place your bets on the eventual outcome.
I’ll provide follow-up details as the adventure unfolds.
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Relative Something 