Sitting Duck

In summer, there is an auction on Saturday mornings in the town of Woodville. It is a livestock auction, not an antique auction so wear rubber boots and not dressy “I’m out in the country for the day” looking swish shoes which should never have to navigate a mud bog, slippery uphill climb, or heaven forbid...any pile of assorted critter poop.

If you take your children with you, pack your steeliest resolve and firmest “Nay-saying” voice or you will be bringing home with you every sad-eyed, thinnish, needs a good home, save the donkeys, oh aren’t they really cute” animal that they lay eyes on. This is how we acquired Liam the duck.

He came home with us in a batch of fluffy yellow, peeping oh-so-cute siblings, after only a mere ten minutes or so of “Oh PLEEEEEZE Mom...come on, PLEEEEEEEZE?!?!” I caved surprisingly easily; it must have been those little webbed feet. We made a home for them in an empty stall in the barn, and it wasn’t two days until some predator burrowed up into the stall from outside and spirited one away...um, weren’t there five ducklings mom? No sweety, I’m sure we only brought home four.

They moved into a steel dog crate after that for awhile until they got too big, then were relocated into the concrete-floored chicken coop under much protest from the chickens, who picketed and held anti-duck rallies. The kids had fun watching the ducks swim in the fake plastic pond we set up for them and fed them lettuce and treats, then lost interest in them completely. I was left to be mother duck and fed and cleaned them every day. For anyone has had ducks, they are the messiest things on the planet. I led them out to play in the day and back in at night, and when they started to fly, they could do a circuit of the barnyard then land on my back. Trust me, you don’t want to carry one around for too long...they poop every 20 seconds without fail.

Liam was the cutest one of the four, he was dark brown where the others were mixed browns, black and white, and he didn’t have the big red warty thing above his beak like the other muscovies developed as they got older. One afternoon I came home from work and found him sitting on the floor of his stall looking very sad. He had been bitten in the side by a fox perhaps. He wasn’t too bad off, but his wing looked broken and we didn’t know how bad the damage underneath was. Luckily Tom’s cousin was a vet and graciously accepted my frantic call. We took him to her house and he was the perfect patient, letting us flip him onto his back on her kitchen counter while she carried out an examination. She cleaned the wound, dressed it, and even came back a few times to change the dressing. Sure, the ten dollar bunch of ducklings turned into several hundred dollars in a short period of time, but what could I do?

He never was able to fly, but healed up just fine. Several bottles of wine later, I was just fine too, but decided to give the ducks away to another farm where they had lots and lots of other ducks and fowl to play with. I am told Liam has children now and is as happy as can be. He’s not the only one, the chickens have repo-ed their home and have taken the plastic back off their furniture.

Bunny on Deck

There is a bunny that comes every morning to the deck area just outside the kitchen window where the bird feeders sit along the rail. Just as it’s starting to get light out, he peeks up over the edge of the deck, looking left and right to make sure the coast is clear and in profile looks just like a big chocolate Easter bunny out there (that’s not why I like him so much). As it gets lighter, he comes onto the deck scrounging for seeds that have dropped from the feeders, and I can see the beautiful colours of rust and grey in his fur.

I love this bunny and whenever I see him I wish I could scoop him up and squeeze him and carry him around all day like Paris Hilton’s purse dog. He is that cute. I would be careful though, not like Lennie in “Of Mice and Men”...I think something bad happened to the bunny in that story. If anyone has seen “Watership Down” or read the book, they have been traumatized for life like myself and I can give you the number of my therapist. My mother took me to see the movie when I was about ten and I tell you I have never forgotten it..or what parts I remember seeing from between my fingers which were gripped tightly over my face. Thanks mom, love ya!

I am going to quickly check my reference above online, however, we have had quite alot of snow this morning and I’ll need to execute emergency internet snow removal procedures first: 1) open bedroom window, remove screen making sure drifts of snow stuck to screen fall outward and not onto bare feet inside bedroom 2) lean way out with kitchen broom and brush snow from satellite dish without dropping two stories to unglamorous death, blog yet unfinished and reference unchecked. 3) Rinse and repeat as necessary.

Internet is back up and running...yahoo....and now thanks to marvellous modern convenience (kitchen broom), I can publish my blog then fix little bunny a nice salad for dinner.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Does anyone remember the Tale of Peter Rabbit where Peter, forbidden by his mother to go near Mr. McGregor’s garden, cannot resist the temptation and ventures there anyway, gorging on vegetables until he is spotted and chased by Mr. McGregor, leaving his jacket and shoes behind in the process? Mr. McGregor then uses them to dress a scarecrow in his garden, and Peter returns home exhausted and ill.

Surrounding our acreage here in the country we have neighbours on three sides and a few simple rules for our children. They have 25 acres, a pond, tree fort and animals to play with and the rules are simple: stay on the property, don’t litter and treat the animals with kindness and respect. This was just too much restriction for our Peter Rabbit (my son Jack, then aged 13), and his friend, and the temptation of Farmer Brown’s pond to the south of us held unexplored possibility.

I had gone out for the afternoon the day Jack had his friend Justin over, but my husband Tom was home, doing work outside around the property. The afternoon passed, and Justin went home, but as Tom tells it, late afternoon, the dust of a pickup truck going at great speed could be seen from the road and when the truck came hurtling down our driveway, Tom stopped his work and came over to see what the emergency was. A very irate farmer Brown screeched to a stop beside Tom, rolled down the window and dangled out a very large, bright orange, sized 12 flip-flop. “Do you know anyone who might own this?” he snarled. I gulped as Tom recounted the story, because I knew instantly, being the person who purchased said sized 12 flip flop just recently, knew it belonged to Jack. “I found this down by my pond. There were two boys throwing carrots into the pond”. He liked to scatter carrots around the pond for the deer to feed on. Tom wasn’t quite sure what happened, but was putting the pieces together and managed to placate farmer Brown and send him less angrily on his way.

Jack’s punishment was a phoned apology to our neighbour and to go back, clean up the mess and fish the carrots out of the pond. Never having had officially met before, much to Jack’s horror and embarrassment, they got a chance one morning during a family breakfast at our local diner when in walked farmer Brown. Jack could barely raise his eyes from his plate of bacon and eggs to say hello but farmer Brown was surprisingly pleasant and good natured with Jack, perhaps remembering his days as a young lad. Unless of course he was working on a new scarecrow complete large orange flip flop.

The Good Old Days (When Horses Worked for a Living)

This morning the wind is bitterly cold but the sun is shining, so as I trudge through the front field in my barn-cleaning space suit, avoiding ice patches and frozen land mines, a recurring daydream begins to play in my head, where instead of going to shovel manure and throw down hay bales, I skip lightly down the steps of my home dressed in tailored jacket and jodhs, my hottie groom tossing me the reins with a wink and a leg up, and I canter off across the fields where beneath the shade of the elm trees, Colin Firth awaits me....ok, ok, back to reality...

Sliding back the barn door, I am greeted with the warm wickers of horses who are not really so glad to see me personally, but who are rather excited about getting breakfast. I work for them. They do nothing more during the winter than laze about and eat as much as they can and have competitions to see who can poop the most during the night. I’ve decided to recruit my girlfriends from the gym, Tom Sawyer style, to help me do the barn chores while making them think they are getting the best workout ever, and having fun to boot!

The structure of the workout is as follows:

Warmup: See how many times you can go up the ladder, throw down a bale, scurry down the ladder, carry it down the aisle, stack it, and repeat. Bonus points if you can carry two bales down the aisle at once.

Cardio: In each stall, scoop up pitchfork full of manure and carry out to wheelbarrow without dropping any – just like the egg and spoon race! Keep going until all poop is carried away. Points deducted for any small poops which have escaped from between fork tines. Bonus points added for pushing wheelbarrow to very top of manure pile when dumping.

Resistance Training: Fill outdoor water trough by carrying full buckets from pump in barn. Open bales of hay and carry to outdoor feeder and to each stall – especially good for biceps. Bonus points for finding any severed snakes or dead mice which were threshed and baled accidentally – just like the surprise in a box of cracker jacks.

Cool Down: Sweep every nook and cranny of barn aisle...good for shoulders and back strength. Bonus points for nabbing errant cobwebs, points off for finding any missed baling twine or metal shaving bag staples.

If I can get the girls there once, it will be doubtful I could get them to return, after they realize they are encrusted in a layer of dirt, dust, hay bits and are wrapped in the ammonia smell of horse pee. Colin Firth would be running for the hills!

I Know it's Cold!

Unsolved Mysteries Explained: Midnight FedEx Deliveries to Barn and Large Credit Card Bills..ok, who swiped my blackberry??

Farmsitting

Farmsitting, like babysitting can be a fun and rewarding experience; a beautiful country setting and well-behaved animals, likewise children, can lend itself to the perfect employment set-up. But what if something were to *gasp* happen to one of the charges on your watch? It becomes a farmsitter's nightmare...

When my husband and I were dating, he took his children on a family vacation and I was thrilled to be able to volunteer to stay on the farm with my children and look after the horses and chickens; all that room to roam and best of all... horses! Paradise at last...what could possibly go wrong? Some things were a bit hard to get used to like the lack of curtains or blinds on any of the windows. It took several days to convince myself that no one could possibly be bored enough to come way out in the middle of nowhere and stand watching me do a Friday night popcorn and videofest (unless you've seen Nightmare on Elm Street that is), then cut my phone lines, electrical lines and chase me to the barn in the darkness where all the sharp pitchforks are...agghhh..I want to go home!!

Each morning my daughter and I would let the chickens out for the day to play and each evening, all we had to do was a headcount and lock up their coop for the night. Emma, who was about six years old at the time, was especially good at this.."three, four,......mom, one is missing", she yelled from the coop. "Count again", I called as small beads of perspiration began to form in the back of my very responsible mind. Sure enough, one was missing, but which one? The black one, rusty one, white one..big rusty one..I didn't know them well enough to know who was who. We searched and searched most of the evening, and just before dark, Emma pointed to a small lump behind a bucket in the barn aisle, "There he is mom!"

There he was alright, dead as a doornail behind the bucket..and on my watch too. Dating was hard enough without murdered animals being thrown into the mix; Tom would never want to continue dating such a horrible, irresponsible.......chicken killer! How could this happen..did I feed him the right food, give him water...he could have been ninety years old for all I knew. We gave him a nice burial and send off out at Dead Chicken Hill; no doubt a popular banqueting spot for all the local coyotes, and, dragging my shovel dejectedly back to the barn, began to plan exactly when I should give Tom the bad news.

All in all, we had a great time though, and finished out the week with a barbeque and hike in the back fields. Tom called from the cab on the way home from the airport and I sheepishly let him know that the little rusty chicken had passed. "What!...Harold? Harold died? and then to his kids while covering the mouthpiece of the phone "Harold died". At this point I can hear muffled sobs coming from the other end of the line. "Jessie's bawling", Tom whispered, "He was her favourite chicken....friendly, just like a dog". Oh great, that's it, I'm handing in my resignation!

Photo by Tom Zsolt