#@!!*)))%!!! Raccoon(s)!!!!!

I tried and tried to hate you Raccoons. I tried.
I now need to go get more ducks, the ducks that lived
in the trees, who used the duck bucket daily,
my beloved ducks.

I bought the LiveTrap, I had my husband put your
favorite eggs in it. You were in the trap within minutes, you
p-i-g pig.

You snarled at me, snapped at me when I tried to give you
bread, then you decided I was ok, and took the marshmallow
that I put in your cage and use it for a pillow.

You made me laugh, and I hate you for that.

Please enjoy your new life over down by the dump, as
there are many new delights to dig into there, just don't
come back, as we put the trap back out, and all your
brothers and sisters are coming to visit you soon, as soon
as they find the trap with the eggs.

I hate that you're so damn cute.

Yours as long as it takes, Audrey

Marshmallow Pillow:





!

The Duck Bucket

I had a friend give me a pondliner. I have a friend with a bulldozer, what is wrong with me??? But before that....

I found one day that 11 ducklings were in the yard. Then 6 then 5 then 3, then 2, so on that day, I decided to do something, something that would make them not want to leave the yard and meet their maker off-premises. I decided to buy a bucket, so that they could swim. They weren't tall enough to see that the horse trough had water in it, so I buried a bucket. It's a rubber bucket, maybe 25 gallons or so, but big enough that they both could get in. Now that they're grown, they can't do but one at a time, but they love it. I keep it refreshed, and Bink pulls the leaves out, and we keep it high enough so that the resident toad can swing a leg over to get out.... we found that if its cold, and the toad goes in, he is there til we fish him out.

Ducks are GREAT. If we'd known this, we'd of had them before. These just wandered in and have stayed, corn is a great bribe. They do slappy feet all over the horse pen, eating and keeping the flies down, they snap so fast! They are a bit too large for our diminuitive hawks, and they sleep either up in the oaks (where they spent the hurricane, hunkered) or they fly to meet friends at a lake behind our property. They aren't loud, they don't get toooo friendly and poop on the porch, like the chikns, and they wag their tails when they're happy to see us. One has laid eggs in a hollow cypress in the yard, but thats another story.

The pond liner will have to wait awhile, right now this is just enough.

Recycle this!

I heard cans falling and shuffling under the kitchen window, and I went outside and stood very very still. Sure enough, the recycle bin was teeming with life. I waited, and a head popped out. I knew him, he was a spotted skunk. They call them civet cats here, but they are skunks. Mona the poodle had recently been doused several times by him, and the good thing about these tiny boogers is that the smell doesnt last as long as a regular skunk. Maybe 2-3 hrs. Its hell when it happens at 11 pm when you're just about to go to bed, but ok if its during the early evening hours. These things are totally nocturnal.

I left after observing it trying to make a nest or something in there. THE NEXT NIGHT (oh, I should have known) while we were outside at night doing things in the workshop, the thing went in the cat door. Bink, my 8 yr old, was already in bed, he has a sort of bunk bed, he sleeps in the top... thank goodness..............when we came in to go to bed, Mona the poodle was at point in his room, fascinated with something under his huge toy chest. Nico looked under the toy chest with a flashlight and indeed confirmed that the skunk was there. Nico had a prior relationship with the skunk, as it part-times in his woodshop, and they have had regular conversations for a few months. The skunk in essence told him to, no, no essence of skunk. The skunk yawned, rolled over and indicated that he was there for the long haul. They have a working friendship, there would be no fumes that night. He tried to cajole it out of there, it was up against the wall behind it, we didnt want to move the chest, as it would probably spook or smoosh him. We had a mess to figure out. So, Nico went to bed. He had thrown cat food at it, and it ate the cat food and curled up and went back to sleep, so there was nothing else he figured he could do. NOOoooOoo. Not me. I continued thru the night to stand vigil, it got really boring. So, I made a line of cat food out the back door, took my dogs and locked them in the studio with me, and waited. I checked once an hour or so, and at 4 am, he decided to leave. I now keep the back door shut. Thank god that Bink didn't wake up, there would have been a child too wired to sleep, and that night was long enough!

Batten Down the Hatchlings!!!

No, theres no babies at this point, but one is sitting on nest, right outside my kitchen window in one of the aforementioned buckets. 15 more days. But there's a hurricane swingin round, and pretty soon we'll have to move her bucket and all, to a safer place... hmmmm ... probably in my art studio.

One hurricane we put all the animals except the horses in my studio and boarded it up. Goats, and turkeys on sawhorses facing each other over a tarp. Plenty of food and water for the 24 hours they were in there. NEVER AGAIN. We had goatie footprints 8 foot up on the walls inside, and the turkeys that sat facing each other on the sawhorses, they had no idea that they could get down, all they saw was each other. When I went to take the big tom down, his legs had fallen asleep. He was up and around in about 10 minutes, but I felt a little guilty that they were that um, dumb. Then there was the issue of all those little "smart pills" that the goaties left. They dry and roll under things, and we found them for years. Under file cabinets and anything low.

You know what smart pills are. My dad used to point to frozen rabbit poop in the winter, and tell me if I ate those, i'd get smarter next time. I never did take him up on it.

Why I haven't written.

I didn't want to bum anyone out. BUT this is a farm. Things happen. Life swings in and swings out. Hawks swoop in and take food. Any food. Chickns are their favorites. Also, things get old. Horses. We had to put one of the horses to sleep a few weeks ago. I do know why people live in condominiums. I really do. Its sterile, and life and death ugliness never is allowed past the security gate. I know many people who are more sensitive to these type of events than I am, and many who are not sensitive atall. I like them both the same, its what you were raised with, and what you just plain got used to. I suppose that what i'm doing is living life for today,and documenting that day. We can't expect things to be the same forever, and we really need to talk ourselves out of that expectation. We've got our own hawks, and they chase us, but we get really good at hiding, and come out anyway, to face it. So thats what I'm doing, and altho I would like to portray everything as sunny and bright and all what I call "duckies bunnies and chickies," well, its not. But still, we plod on.

We had an elm tree, rare around here, and it went thru the hurricane well. Then, it lost its leaves, and we saw that it was all twisted up, all those long Y shaped arms were weakened. Then, when the leaves grew back, the weight of the new leaves dragged the arms of the tree down lower, and from the looks of it, the next hurricane was going to take the branches right off, and throw em. Cutting it back is the only thing we could do, andmy husband is a monkey. Has the tree climbing belts and spikes, and went right up, took a long string which he had tied to a chainsaw on the ground, and when he walked out on the now-horizontal limbs, pulled the chainsaw up, started it and went to work. It gives me a heart attack to see him on the end of branches, but he's the one in the family with all the grace.

Armadillos are Oblivious

It took all the nerve I had to stand outside my studio at 2 am last night and wait to see what was rustling in the bushes. I stood rock still and waited to see what it was going to be. At first i didnt know if it was a possum or an armadillo, the shape and that long tail...but it got closer, and I was relieved, the armadillo didnt know i was there. He walked right by me on the sidewalk in front of my patio, his toenails clicking as he walked. He stopped for bugs here and there, and wandered in circles for about 5 mins til he disappeared...I snuck off chuckling and went in to bed.

The Chicken Elevator

One of the chickens in the buckets on the back porch decided to sit on eggs. The other chickens still wanted to lay eggs in her bucket, and you get one irritated chicken, aside from eggs that all start at different times... so during the day, we covered her up with a screen, and kept food and water in the bucket (which she never touched) and took off the cover at night. She stayed tight while racoons took eggs out of the buckets next to her, and only left every few days to stretch her legs and get some food and water. In time, 2 of the eggs hatched, and she spent 3 more days on the nest to make sure the others weren't going to hatch, and it was time to put the bucket down on the floor. The babies were standing on mom's back, and were eager to get out into the real world.

I put the bucket on the floor of the porch and gave them water and food, and they drank and drank, and mom showed them how to peck at the food, and scratch, all the while making the mom noises, so if they hear it, they come running back. We try while they're young, to pick them up, but unless they see a need, they avoid us. The need came that night, when they found out that mom could get back into the bucket but they couldn't.

It took some patience to coax the babies from the back of the bucket, it took a fast grab the first night, a slow grab the second night, and by the third night, they individually waited their turn for the chicken elevator.



I leave some eggs in the other buckets that are still up on the pass thru bar, just in case the raccoons wander back in, I dont have to cover her at night, because if the 'coon has the choice between an easy egg and an angry chicken, they'll pick the latter. I also leave the back door open, and Mona the poodle patrols. There are 2 other chickens that sleep on the back porch as well, but thats another story for another day. (the chicken coop out back holds the other 13)

Armadillos

We have decided that armadillos are not to be scorned, as are the racoons and possums. They eat bugs, and altho they make little holes all over your yard and garden, I have the reassuring feeling that because they were there, there are now several less cockroaches and waterbugs on the planet.

I came out the door of my studio the other night, and quickly stepped back in. There was riotous leaf-disturbance going on in the bush to the left of the door. I called Mona.. she came over to me, and gestured that she wanted to play. CANT YOU HEAR? There's a monster under the bush! What animal in its right mind would concentrate so hard on getting bugs that it wouldn't hear me talking to the dog? This thing was practically under my feet! And what was with the dog! I eventually called Bud, the old black lab. He took off after it, and when it popped out of the bushes, and beat a hasty exit down the driveway, I called off the dog. He came back dejected, but the thing looked to me like a half a watermelon running down the driveway, cut the long way. Half a football. Somewhere in that range. At least I knew the monster was an armadillo.

I'd seen him 6 months before, on a night like this, balmy and nice. My husband had seen him in the driveway and called me out, to stand like a wall, while he tried to catch it. I did my job, he flushed it out of the bushes, and the darn thing ran right between my legs. It was trying to see who was chasing it, and truly, they must be not all there, cause it went slow enough for me to have grabbed it. I had no intention of picking it up, but did touch it, and what a hot little football it was. His temperature was like a dogs, must have been 102, I had expected, i don't know, maybe snake-ish, with that hard shell.

Next time I just might get the nerve to pick it up. (Just to say hi, then let it go) I might just have a formal introduction to the dogs, with firm instructions not to chase or bother. They do really well with the chickens!

They get
babies,
they get
testy.

MyChickenSpace.com

This was a gift from my friend Smartypants

Raccoons had learned every which way to enter my chicken coop. I put rocks under the footer board, they jimmied the handle and opened the door. Possums learned how as well, so we were actually, with 13 chickens, having to buy eggs! Sacrilege!

That Christmas, my mom gave me 5 Pottery Barn Buckets, and I decided to fill them with hay and seed them each with an egg and let the chickens find them. I set them up on the passthru to my kitchen on the back porch, and it's not as messy as you'd think, the chickens only go there now to lay eggs. The other stuff they do, well, they dont do it when they're going to lay an egg. The chickens are now safe to lay their eggs and I have eggs by the back door!

My standard poodle Mona has taken to guarding the henhouse at night, so damages have been cut there as well.

I took a picture of this, and posted it on a message board, and this is what I got back from Smarty. Thanks!

What I'm working on

I'm supposed to be making this into a birthday card.
I'll post it when it's done.

Hibiscus 5

Hibiscus5, 12" x 12" Acrylic Painting