animals

So this car full of guys pulled up the driveway this morning, and we could tell the dogs didn't know who it was. They wanted to know if they could buy one of the white chickens out in the henhouse. I said I'd have to discuss it with Jim. That's a new one, though. I've had people ask about buying eggs (this time of year, there aren't any), but never wanting one chicken.

So I went out and checked. There are 20 guinea hens he has free-ranging, and it looks like he's had his incubator at home working overtime and there ARE eggs being laid, because there are various kinds of birds out there under heat lamps (babies), quail, pheasant, chickens, unidentified species, and there's still that gigantic turkey out there. Every time he builds another aviary, the just gets more birds...I'm staying out of it.

So I checked on the mushroom logs while I was out there (no mushrooms, at least no shittakes, or is it shitakke or shitake...you know what I mean). And then I checked on the pond. oops...it never occurred to me to worry about the goldfish. At the house on Nicholasville Road, I always wintered the goldfish (it had a pond out back) in a wading pool in the basement. Until one year I forgot to bring them in before the pond froze. And they survived anyway. It is clear that many of the ones here did NOT survive. And there's a dead frog floating in the pond, too.

Is the term "dead livestock" an oxymoron?

And then there are the dead moles. Molly (the cat) loves catching moles; I just watched her chase a really big one across the driveway. It got away, though. Now she's got a mouse out there. I think she may be the reason we don't have all that many mice in the house this winter.

To spring...