Moot Witness

The baby girls are so huge now. We acquired 18 chicks of 4 different breeds this year, with the intent to raise them up and give half of them to a coworker of the boy. They were the proverbial peeping (and pooping!) fuzzballs when we got them....a couple days old at most. It's been nearly six weeks and now they are like little pre-teen girls. You can see what they are going to look like as adults, they are eating us out of house and home and they flock and squabble like a Jonas Brothers audience. This weekend, 9 of them are going to their new home. It's been a little hard to decide who we're keeping, though I think I've earned the privlege for caring for them entirely during the Sabbatical. ( It's been amazing to watch this year's little girls grow....so fast. We've raised them up from infancy once before...two springs ago. Here's Dolores (an Ameraucana) at a couple days old...peep peep peep... And here she is yesterday, at 2 years old...bok bok bok... S...

I have been badgering the boy in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways for many months about using our tax returns for a large, flat TV. Perhaps what I look most forward to is watching things like this: I vow to get my hands on every David-Attenborough-narrated thingie involving birds and bugs and plants and strange sea creatures I can and have a friggin' party . For one, most likely. In other news, it hit 50 degrees today, which made the chickens very happy. I hadn't seen them dustbathing in seemingly aeons...partly because the run has been covered in snow and/or mud for months. The sight of chickens dustbathing in the sun is one of the most pure expressions of Joy you will see....perhaps akin to pigs wallowing or dogs rolling in something dead. The girls have, over time, created dips in the ground of the run doing this...which makes walking around in there an exercise in maintaining good balance. They hunker down in these depressions and lay on one side of their breast, kicking ...

This month is historically, after 13 New England winters, not the best time for me, outlook-wise. Too much indoor sloth and near-unlimited opportunities for ponderous brooding, exacerbated by my semi-recent departure from four rollercoasty years of animal sheltering, euthanasia and involvement in cruelty investigations doesn't lend one towards a Pollyanna attitude. Thankfully, a great new career opportunity is on the horizon, the spring peepers will start their nightly swamp ruckus in a matter of weeks and it's no longer entirely premature to allow the 2010 Garden Visions to get percolating in the brain. It's also helpful to take stock in the good things. Like...my kooky, little, three-legged sidekick, Sveta. It's trite to say, but she is my best friend....and the first thing and last thing I see every day. One of my biggest points of pride, my natural history/curiosites collection. 18 years as a veterinary technician plus many thoughtful friends and relatives over t...