Wads of Kittens

and I put my etsy stuff on here, its a good thing.

The kittens are asking if they can stay.

Good Lord, its been since August? It flew. So did our oak tree in the back yard, it flew right into my aviary for the partridges. My son took a movie of the collateral damage, and I did one of the cleanup, I doubt I'll be able to maintain this reporterly discipline when it comes to rebuilding the thing, as it'll doubtlessly be done in dribs and drabs, or whenever the partridges get militant about having their house back.

Bink's version:




Mine:

Dog Days of August.

Mona the standard poodle is almost 11. My son wanted a dog of his own, and I saw on Craigslist, somebody had a Peruvian Hairless dog. Now, my husband is Mexican, and he told me stories about an ancient breed called a Xolosquintle, but he just called it a Squinkly. There's yer name, dawg. Actually, dogette, as she's 10 weeks, has a little unbilical hernia and some fuzz on the ears which of course, in dogdom, disqualifies her as Squinkly champ of the planet, but just flawed enough to fit in. She slept all the way home on her back on my son's lap, cept for the romp at the rest area on I-75, and she did well, not straying too far, and coming back to us when we called, she loved running with the Bink, and hopefully, now that we've had her a few days, she'll start listening to the cluephone about the peepees and the poopies outside. What. What. What was I thinking? (i was thinking it'd be neat to have one)

We shall see. I'll be able to put my full attn on it when Bink starts school soon. Til then, she'll be livin the life of Riley, along with Bink. For now.

Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, April 2009

This is a day trip we took last weekend, with my childhood friend Keith, Bink and his friend Travis to Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, a few miles from here. Drought has concentrated all the wildlife! From the tiny feeder fish, to the protected wood stork, they are all are in the only areas left with water. It cost $10 each and $4 for the kids, I'd say it was well worth our while, we saw a hawk sail over our heads and take out a rat, in the grass, we didn't have a chance to film that. The amount of wildlife we saw that day was amazing. April is a great month for the parks here, but bad in that there has been little or no rain for months, and this is supposed to be the tropics! Pretty arid here in April, it didn't used to be,... its all changing constantly.

Pregnant Goats, Spring has Sprung.

Bonita had two babies, a boy and a girl right before Christmas. She was a terrible first time mother, not the worst I've seen, but we did have to take that colostrum by force, and keep the babies in the house at times, lucky for us, they didn't care if it were mothers milk or cow milk, they took whatever was available. She ignored the boy, as he must have come first, way out in the back, and she had the girl in the hog shed. My son found her and the baby, and while I was sitting with them, I heard that plaintive wail I'd heard before, baby lost in the woods. It's chilling. I ran got him, and showed him to her, and she ran off. !!! She eventually got it that it was hers, but never did nurse either of them much. Next time.

The pics above are Chloe's new babies, Lorraine and her brother, he is the camel colored one with white spots, almost identical to Bonita's boy. They both look like their dad, Al. As soon as I knew they were all pregnant, I sold Al to a friend, because I didn't want him re-doing them all the instant they gave birth. (not that fast but fast) Chloe's had babies before, and is a great mom.

Earline should blow any day now, Wheezy, her mother is next, Carmela and Zoey are both pregnant.....that a total of 12 possible new goatie babies. AAAAAAAAAAAA!

And the pregnant ones are crabby!!!

Where I Live

It's jungly here, and tree frogs abound. I had one jump and land on my face one time, screaming was NOT an option, as its feet were there, and its body on my nose, and its little hands were grasping my glasses and forehead. The strangest feeling on the planet, I'll tell you. But I digress.

Some jungle I planted, some was here, some are pure fantasy, it works!

If momma ain't happy ain't nobody happy.

That's what the sign says on my chikn coop:

When Pigs Fly

last week at the auction a pig got loose and rampaged thru the crowd,
sorry i missed it. The pigs get VERY loud and HATE any sort of change
to their routine, and they can jump a 4' fence if they feel like it,
or just crash thru like that one did. I made the guys a new sign.

December's List for January and a PRINT!

This Print's for sale! It's 6.5 x 9.5, give or take, and it's
a signed, limited edition of 250, of Bueller, the baby steer.
Everybody calls it Bueller, but I call it Cow. It looks like
a cow to me. I am totally uneducated as to the correct terminology,
so I get away with a lot. It's $45. plus $5. ship, cool beans!

Anyone who buys one that is a friend gets
the Schietztreun Discount. Whatever that is.

AND thank you Jenny, (she bought the original)!
----

Ok, this blog has been a poquito sporadic, sometimes things go on that just apall me, sometimes I get busy, and most times, I'm just a TAD scattered, but there are still so many stories going on around me here. I'd like to make a list of stuff that I'd like to talk about and/or draw, for 2009.

Lefty the Parakeet
The Partrige Family in my backyard
Building Aviaries!
Lorraine and her crusty ol husband the Peacock
The Red Golden Pheasants, Max and Joanne
Richard the Volunteer Cat
How to sure-fire give away a Kitten


Wish me luck!

The King of Schietztreun Acres

This is no ordinary rabbit.

He has singlehandedly saved over 10 chickens and 5 baby rabbits, twice.

I'm totally serious.

Months ago, a woman gave me some rabbits to sell. A bunch of colored dwarfs, cute, and one giganto white momma. New Zealand White. The night before we were to sell the rabbits, all of a sudden big momma makes a nest, pulls her own hair out to do it, and by morning, had several tiny white baby rabbits. Some didn't make it, I was anxious, so I read up on babies, I was considering messing around with them, as she didn't look like she was feeding them! Turns out rabbits don't feed them but once or so a day!!! Not the most attentive moms, as they don't go chase them and gather them back, either, much.

We sold all the brothers and sisters, and most of the colored rabbits, eventually, but felt that this one was special. He escaped his pen, when he was a teenager-in-rabbit-years, but was easily picked up, as he had no fear of either the dogs or the cats or us. He has the run of the yard now, any time I go out during the day, I have absolutely no idea where he is. He might be under the woodpile, he might have burrowed himself half to China under the Bougainvillea, the one with the thorns that prevent anyone from going there. I don't know. He was impossible to keep in, other than lock him up in a hutch, and he generally stuck around, so we set him free.

At night tho, that's a different story. We had to put a plank up next to his girlfriend, as he likes to sleep next to her, she's in a hutch, so we had to elevate his perch. We did have her on a stand, and there was a board sticking out, and he probably fell off many times while we weren't looking, as it was too small for him to lay on and chat her up comfortably.

I often work late, as I am nocturnally challenged, always have been, and sometimes I hear noises, and go out and check, and sometime I don't, and go out in the morning to utter devastation, if a raccoon has visited silently. Things happen here, more things than I would ever care to talk about, as its a bummer. Life is like this, there are horror shows with farm animals that force the more tender hearted into their condominiums with no pet rules, they close the door and lock it and the life and death process is effectively hidden from them for awhile. Here it's more in your face.

Like when the raccoon took our beloved Polish Rooster only 20 feet where Nico was working on something in his shop. Snatched it right out of the hen house. From a perch! Nico ran to the house for a flashlight, but could only hear it now, in the far distance, and we never did find it. Then one morning a raccoon did some massive damage to some really cute young quail, causing Nico such consternation, arriving upon the carnage, that he tore off into the woods in his underwear, granted it was 6 in the morning, but if he'd seen the raccoon, he was of a firm mindset to pick up a rock, and he was so mad that if he had, he could have taken it out of a tree a hundred feet away and 20 foot up, I have no doubt. His anger makes him damn accurate. Mine makes me nothing but incoherent.

So, back to the bunny. We've had attacks that caused no noise, as I said. It was 2 am on a lovely quiet night. I stepped out on to the patio from my studio, and Bunnificent is coming at me fast. He screeches to a stop in front of me, on the sidewalk. He sits straight up like a rod is through his whole body, ears straight up, wild eyed. In an instant he took off running towards my husband's workshop, 30 feet away. I actually, i kid you not, said out loud "Whatsa matter, Lassie, did Timmy fall down the well again?" Turns out he had.

I walked after the rabbit, and within 10 feet noticed that there was a bucket full of eggs that a chicken had been nesting on for the last almost 3 weeks, and she wasn't on it. !!!!?

That right there was worrisome, as they never leave the nest at night. I walked over and felt the eggs. They were absolutely hot, like she had JUST left. I walked further, and the rabbit was no where to be seen, but there, in front of the closed chicken coop door, 20 feet ahead of me, was the chicken. In shock, she was bleeding out one ear, and one eye was starting to swell shut. Something had attacked her, and I didn't hear or see one thing. At this point she never would have returned to the nest, she was in one of those zones where they just go into some fugue state, while they decide whether they will live or die. I had just had another Silkie chicken this happened to days before, she'd decided not to finish her eggs, (only 2, but i felt bad anyway) after she'd been attacked and cut very badly. I bandaged the newly-injured white chicken like I did the Silkie, and knew that she would do what the Silkie had done, pumped full of Neosporin and all bandaged up, she'd just stand there deciding. In one place for days. Luckily I'd started our incubator just a few days before, regulating the temp, so all the eggs were saved. I just stuck them in the incubator.

I now had 2 shocky chickens, and one marvelously talented rabbit. He had come to get me, I was wondering if I should call him Lassie, but he was even better than that.
He needed no praise, he just wanted outdoor food and water, the run of the place and carrots. We see him all over, like he has some circuit that he runs, 5 pm, he's by the gate, waiting for us all to come home from work, at 11 he's with the girlfriend.

The babies hatched, and I had these 2 wounded chickenmoms, each had lost their will to set on their eggs, and both seemed totally shell shocked. (is there a pun there?) So, when the babies were in the brooder, I thought to myself, hell, maybe both of em could regain their will to live if I put them in the brooder with all these babies. Maybe they'll share em.

They did. Slowly the Silkie started moving around, showing them how to eat and scratch, but they crawled under the stoic white chicken to sleep. In a few months, they were all outside, the Silkie kept the mother thing going the longest, and they both recovered just fine. They've both since had more babies, and stayed with it for the course.

Back to Bunnificent. We mated the girlfriend dwarf bunny to another small bunny, I guess he didn't care, as he liked the boyfriend. The boyfriend was given to a friend after that, as I thought maybe Bunnificent would take a shine to the babies. He did.

He must have considered them his own, with no actual contact, except for twice by accident. Our learning curve at times is a flat line, I am sure of it. Not always, as we do have some talent at keeping things alive, but this time we did have massive brain failure.

I can't remember who found this scenario. The babies when they were born were all so tiny, we forgot, that they might fall out the holes in the bottom of the cage. I forgot how much they move around!!! The huge part of this story is that usually if baby bunnies that small fall out, there are any number of chickens that see this, and they are omnivores, that is, that they eat ANYTHING. We'd lost rabbits to them before, and just plain forgot. Well, they did fall out of the bottom of the cage. All 5. Who came to their rescue? Bunnificent. When we found him, he'd made a nest for them out of his own hair. He was determined that the chickens weren't getting these. How strange is that? A MALE? pulling his own chest hair out. We were amazed.

Then we did something really stupid. We piled hay around the outside of the cage, and more on the bottom, and the next day, the same thing happened. Flatline. Again, Bunnificent to the rescue. Dug a hole, fur lined, ready to defend babies and keep them warm. I've never noticed even the mother rabbit retrieving a baby, if they wander off, thats it. but this rabbit of ours has earned a place of respect I don't think that even the dogs have reached yet. I watch him sometimes playing with our cat, and think, how cool is that. He is one of all of us. He's always putting himself out there, engaged. There is something totally charming about seeing him out of the corner of your eye, an Alice in Wonderland fantasy, he knows you see him. He's everywhere. I also thank him for being a New Zealand White! When he is full grown, he's going to be huge. He's definitely big now, but probably will be twice the size he is now, and there is no hawk around, nor owl who'd want to mess with that. I've seen foxes and reports of coyotes, but he seems to know how to disappear into the woodwork, literally, and his brain is no average rabbit brain.

He will have the life he wants, and as many carrots as he wants, he's earned it.

Cow down, cow up.

He's not a cow. He's a steer. I found that out. We had him fixed immediately, rambunctious devil that he is. My sis took this pic with her phone, when he's hungr he's insistent.

Lots going on, someone gave me ANOTHER pot bellied pig, and a friend took him to another friend who had a girl or two for him to try on. ha. Pics of Mr.Smiley when he gets back from Club Med.

Aviaries to be built! We have a huge pool cage of aluminum that someone gave us, and that augmented with PT that we have, and even some of the cypress that fell in hurricane Wilma will ensure a sturdy structure. There has to be the main structure and an anteroom, called a "mancatcher"...so that if one gets out when you open the door, it'll still be inside.

I've already built a large holding pen for husband's Red Golden Pheasants, they're happy altho a tad bored, seems. I have a pair of Coturnix quail in there with them as companions, but they seem invisible to each other. That beats the opposite, some breeds don't get along. I think finches and small flighty birds would be fine with the Partridges, I don't want anyone bigger and mean. I don't even think I'd put the quail in with them, the species is too close, and they'd compete for floor space. I think the partridges perch up at night, so there will be small trees and bushes planted for that. More Later.

Cow got very sick last week, scours. I think we switched him too fast on bad advice and replacement milk....a night spent up with him down was awful. I gave him any fluids i could, electrolytes and about 5 am, his nose was wet again. I went to bed and he was up and running around the next day. He had a bad 24 hrs or so. I even had to shoot him up with antibiotics, he didn't care for that, but was too weak to protest. I had to drag him out of the poo by his front feet to the clean stray, and I was glad he was only a month old. There will be no draggin him anywhere in a month.

Mothers Day was great. The honeydo list was out and I was command central. Oh it was great.

New Arrivals!