Romeo and Juliet

Once upon a time, a boyfriend of mine hit a bird with his car and killed it. He send me a text right after it happened. .. back in the days of T9 txting and driving.
I made fun of him.
I'd never killed anything while driving.
Oh... I had fun with that..mocking him, for about an hour.
When a bird dive bombed my car on hwy 2 into port hope and I hit it good and dead.

Spring has finally arrived. Ok, so I read it might snow on tuesday, but we've finally had warm weather and the snow is nearly gone. The birds are in love, everyone and everything is twitterpeted.

I decided to give my car a good cleaning on friday. The dog has managed to cover every inch of the interior of the car in sand and fur from our beach visits, it was about time.

I backed the car in the driveway as usual, opened all the doors and started to vaccum.
While I was vacuuming I realized that my only vacuum joke was about how badly the thing sucked, and tried to come up with some other punny statements knowing how lame that one was... except my vacuum does suck. It doesn't really suck up dirt anymore. It's a crappy vacuum.

I was standing on the driver's side of the car, between the two open doors, wiping something when it happened...

Two of those twitterpeted love birds were soaring around the yard. Squeaking and tweeting and flying like maniacs, they flew thru the gate and
SMACK
flew right into the window inches from my head

And fell to the ground dead and dying.

One dead.
One dying.
Two dead robins.

What was their backup plan if the windows had been open? Fly into the side of my head?

I threw their little bodies in the garbage after considering tossing them to the chickens. I just didn't want to clean up after those little velociraptors after they'd eaten their fill.

Gross.

everyone likes an update

Back to that time I lost my shit.

I took a vacation this week- There were a few things I needed to do around the house...like paint the bathroom, build the fence, coon-proof the coop, and rebuild the rotted wall of the shed.

I've got three days left of my vacation... and it's raining.

Truth is, one of the projects ended up being so much bigger than I thought it would be, and without a vehicle... I spent a lot of my week in "hurry up and wait" mode.

Last sunday night the dog and I found a skunk sitting on my back step.

 It's been living under my neighbour's shed all summer, and hanging out down the street at the construction site for weeks. Sunday night, it decided to cut through my yard on it's way home just as we were headed out for Rueben's last walk. I didn't turn on the light. I was walking with my eyes nearly shut- I cracked the back door open, and Rueben SHOT OUT OF IT and ripped the leash right out of my hand. So I stumbled down the stairs yelling at him... in time to see him PIN a skunk to the ground... in time to watch him let it go... get sprayed, chase it under the trailer... and, as any good herding dog would do... HERD THE SKUNK BACK AT ME. I opened my umbrella to use as a shield. Rue then chased it under the trailer... then back to me.. then under the trailer... then back to me. At one point I went into the house to escape it all... but the stupid dog was barking and pinning the skunk to the ground over and over, I knew I needed to pull him off the skunk if it was ever going to end.

The thing about skunk spray? It doesn't smell like skunk.

I kept wondering if maybe it was a young skunk who hadn't figured out how to spray right yet... because all I could smell was this terrible petrol-like smell... not gas, like heavy oil products.

The thing about skunk spray? It smells like skunk AFTER you start washing it off.

I dumped the dog and myself in the tub... Rueben's first bath since I got him... (note: he hates baths)
And started rinsing us off with baking soda and peroxide. My hands were covered in the stink (from grabbing the dog- and his saturated leash), my feet were covered in the stink (from running around trying to grab the dog in freshly sprayed grass and gravel)... and my nose was full of it. Meanwhile, the dog looked like a cartoon rabies victim with all the foaming at the mouth and drooling he was doing (his reaction to the skunk spray in his mouth) and kept trying to wipe his face on everything.

I'm so thankful I locked him in the back room of the house after that first bath... it's now just the bathroom and back room that have a skunky after smell to them.

Best thing I learned from this experience- have baking soda, peroxide, and a mild dish soap on hand. These are your friends. The dog only smells of skunk right around his mouth and eyes where I couldn't get too close with my cleaning mixture. The rest of him just smells like normal dog. I'm sure there are measurements that you can use, google it ... I just dumped the bottle of peroxide, half a box of baking soda, and a squirt of dish soap into a cup and mixed it together.
As a plus, it's a great exfoliant for yourself.

It took me two showers to pass the sniff test by friends.
Sniff tests took place inside closed vehicles to ensure the results would be true.

That's what friends are for.

(remind me not to wear those flip flops in your car though)

Turn on the lights

Then there was that time that the dog and I got sprayed by a skunk.
Yeah, that happened.

I think I'm almost at the point where I can write about it without KILLING the dog.

I mean, I'm at the point now where I can be in the house without gagging... so that's something..


right?

adventures in urban homesteading. (or) the time I lost my shit.

(apologies for my language...I drop the f-bomb a lot when I'm mad)

I'm going into my 3rd winter with Chickens in town.
I could go on and on about ideas around building the perfect chicken coop- VENTILATION, basic chicken care, and about how frickin' fantastic watching those bumbling featherbutts can be... but I won't... come and ask me questions some time.
My coop is the most hobo-built-redneck creation out there. It's built out of spare pieces of wood and parts off an old rabbit cage (Norty's old cage). It's been great- located inside my shed it's been mostly preditor proof- last fall a set of raccoon prints appeared on the lower side of the coop inside the shed, but the little guy never returned.
And there was the run-in with the fox this summer that made off with 2 of my meat birds, but that was a small run out in the yard, not the coop...

Last night I went to bed early- I've done a string of day shifts, and I find that getting things done and out the door before 7am is hard work... I fell asleep by 9:30 and was sound asleep in my own bed by 10.... at midnight I heard the chickens screaming.

I fumbled around and found a house coat in the dark (because I still haven't bothered to plug the lamp back in under my bed!) and went running out... three of the girls were in the run... Darlene was screaming bloody murder...The girls are never in the run at night- unless the coop door has blown shut and locked them out. So I run into the shed... and come face to face with 4 young raccoons! one took off right away and I never saw it again... one was in the coop eating an egg, and two others climbed up ontop of the coop.

I did what any chicken farmer would do.

I grabbed my broom and started playing raccoon baseball. I whacked the heck outta them- I shoved them, I hissed at them. I yelled (several times) "you mother fuckers get out of my fucking chicken coop!'

What did they do? They took it! One just sort of rolled his eyes at me while I swung at him. Oh, I made contact- once or twice the broom was bitten. Eventually I chased them out of the shed- they ended up on the roof. I could hear them pacing above me, so I went outside and started beating them again- one climbed into the run- where the girls started pecking at him.

This is likely where someone might have called the SPCA on me, because I grabbed the wooden pole that I use to prop open the run door and took a few swings at the beastie. In frustration (because I couldn't reach the jerks on the roof) I had thrown the broom at the coons while I spat out every swear word I've ever learned, so the pole made a great replacement.

It's still on the roof (the broom I mean).

The wooden pole was heavy- I couldn't swing it at the coons on the roof, and it was only 3 feet long. So I switched to the bamboo poles from the garden, at 5 feet long they make an amazing switch... and I could reach the peak of shed roof from the ground.

For the next half hour I ran from one side to the other of the shed, whipping raccoons. I was not gentle... but they seemed to think it was a joke.... till I climbed on the roof of the run and got on the roof of the shed and tried to play raccoon golf.

Finally I'd hit them in the head often enough that the decided to (slowly) leave.
They climbed down onto the fence... where I hit them some more.
Then they climbed over the side of the fence into the neighbour's side- still hanging onto the lattice of the fence.  I spent some time jabbing them in the stomach with my bamboo pole. That pissed them off and they fell off the fence- one fell off the fence and got stuck, that was pretty much the best moment of the night... I may have been laughing manicly at that point. I only stopped when I heard myself loudly say "take that mother fuckers!"

I also realized at that point that my housecoat wasn't done up, and that I was still wearing my mouth guard.

Awesome. Thank goodness I live on a quiet street.





epilogue: I chased the coons again around 3am. No chickens were (seriously) harmed. Tonight I built a cage inside the coop to house the girls till I can do some serious repairs to the side of my delapitated old shed. Vacation/shed repairs start next Monday if anyone would care to join me.

fat cat.

Did I mention the pot luck I went to awhile back? It was with a fantastic group of people, many of them just down on their luck, struggling, self medicating... but.. people. I loved it. It took place in this ramshackle old place, falling apart, smelly... probably should be torn down or condemned... if the health unit knew food was happening here... I can't even imagine!
At once point a scrawny cat wandered into the room... and my first instinct was "this poor little cat! so malnourished! so dirty... so needy!!!" I wanted to scoop it up and take it home with me. Then I started looking around the room and it hit me that I had more compassion for the cat than I did for some of the people who were in the room with me... It really made me check my heart. Right then and there.

Last night we had a strawberry social. It was great! fresh local berries, a great chance to meet some new people... The evening was drawing to a close, I'd seen my little cat try to sneak into the room again, and I'd seen a few others pacing outside the door... too smart to come in. Out of the corner of my eye I watched this nice fat cat slowly walk into the room.. unhurried, just wander over to behind some tables... since we were getting ready to head out I didn't draw any attention to it or try to kick it out. I started to watch it a little closer as it passed under a table nearby... this was my train of thought..... it's the most beautiful shadeofsilveranditsjustfloatingandlookatit'stail-hey-wait-a-second!
"guys... there's a raccoon in here"

Mama Coon and her three little babies are living behind the bar in the storage area in the dining hall.