Festivus

Erin arrived from China a week ago. She'd been there on tour with her orchestra and was on her way back to Montreal, by way of "home" in the Kootenays for a week or so. She had picked up a killer cold in China and spent the better part of the week recovering from that and from the loss of a day and a night or two what with the jetlag, dateline, red-eye flight and the inevitable sleep deprivation of a tour. She brought back photos of the terra cotta army and the Great Wall, as well as of smoggy cities, video arcades in dodgy underground plazas where she fascinated the Chinese teens with her mastery of the motocross game or some-such, markets, plazas, beaches and the like.

I killed chickens. After being vegetarian for the better part of 20 years and having two or three other avowed veg-heads in the family, I was betrayed last summer when both Erin and Sophie decided to start eating meat. My own vegetarianism suddenly seemed like rather a large family inconvenience. So I decided that if I could make my peace with the whole farmyard to table business by immersing myself in it, I'd feel okay about parting from my vegetarian ways. The task I set myself was to kill our own surplus chickens. I selected three of our now-maturing roosters, inverted them in a killing cone so that they settled into somnolence, cut their jugulars, bled them out, dipped and plucked and gutted and dressed them. Into the freezer they went.

We ate one as part of our Festivus Fondue Feast, along with plenty of cheese and veggies and some venison sausage from a friend. I'm not sure I would have been ready to eat it right after the butchering, but the couple of weeks in the freezer allowed some emotional distance for me. I ate it. It was yummy. I feel like an honest carnivore now.

Festivus was great. It snowed a delicious 35 cm of light-as-a-feather white snow overnight and through the day. It was the first big snowfall in a couple of weeks. "It's another Festivus miracle!" said Fiona.

I worried that the lack of all the decorations and music and traditional Christmas rituals would keep it from being special enough, but it was fine. We started the day with fresh-baked cinnamon buns. We opened gifts. Fiona gave me a set of six computer-printed coupons for Free Massages courtesy of herself (she gives great massages!). She imprinted my name on them so they couldn't be stolen and redeemed by other family members. "And," she warned me, "I deleted the file on the computer so you couldn't print any extras." She's got really good business sense, this girl!

The Fondue Feast was swiss cheese to start with veggies and meat, and then chocolate with fruit to finish. After the Feast, we held the Airing of Grievances during which, according to the Seinfeld episode in question, "you state all the ways that your family members have disappointed you over the previous year." Kind of a dangerous place to go, but the kids handled it with humour and sensitivity and a sense of good fun. I'm thankful we never got to the feats of strength, though there had been talk of tickle fights in lieu.

Then we finished the evening by listening to Erin practice the Bach Chaconne in the kitchen.

Holidays 2011

There was no Christmas in this family. We went to my mom's and ate her turkey. But other than that, no Christmas. We're waiting for Erin to get back from China next week, when she'll stop in for a week's visit.

Irish Cream. We've been making it, 3 litres at a time and enjoying it a tiny glassful each of us each night after dinner. It needs to be refrigerated, but our fridge was very full, so we put it on the deck. One day there was only one jar there. We looked around and found an empty jar on the snow on the lawn with the lid chewed off. The dog was discovered to have a very raw-looking (much-licked) snout and a complacent demeanour. We have made more room in the fridge.

Chuck bought a big TV. We had been using an old 27" model that was deeper than it was wide. Now we have a wall-mounted 46" expanse of perpetual programming. I suppose the novelty will wear off and it'll get shut off from time to time. It'll be nice for DVDs and such, but so far it's not talking very well to the input components and we're waiting for a swanky HDMI cable that's on order.

Human Planet. Great new BBC series we've been watching, similar to Planet Earth and Life but focused on human adaptations and innovations in extreme environments. Looking forward to watching it on the TV. For now, my iMac suffices.

We killed animals. My way of making peace with no longer being a vegetarian (since I was the last holdout non-meat-eater in the family). I figured that if I could kill some of our chickens with my own hands and eat them, I could then eat meat in good conscience, in full appreciation of the ethical and practical implications. So today we killed our excess roosters.

I've been running. I managed to do 53k last week, plus some crosstraining. This week will be busier, so fewer miles, but I'm off to a good start.

The kids are back to school tomorrow. We'll celebrate Erin's birthday next weekend, Festivus the following weekend and Fiona's birthday the weekend after that.

Humbug

Look who joined the family yesterday! Since our old cat's demise we've seen a steady climb in the rodent population hereabouts. So we're thrilled to see Humbug stalking flies, developing her hunting instincts. Noah, a.k.a. Cat Boy, is completely smitten. The rest of us are quickly following suit.

Beware of small bears

We had these two in our yard at least once today. Probably twice. A mama and a cub. A tiny, cute little cub. Standing up and peering around, curious about everything.

We think our dog tangled with them this morning, though. Probably got between mama and her cub, a very dangerous place to be. The dog has a few slashes on her flank. They appeared pretty superficial after they first happened, but as the day wore on she has hunkered down and isn't eating or moving around much. She tends to do this when she's in pain, so hopefully it's just a reaction to being sore, and not any more sinister internal injuries.

Noah took these photos. He's the camera hog lately.  Click to enlarge: the expressions on the bears' faces are brilliant. The little guy just needs a hat, a suitcase and a tag that reads "please look after this bear."

They're growing up!

The chickens, that is.

They're a little over two months old now, our dozen Ameraucanas. We got them as fluffy little day-olds and have successfully grown them through their lanky pre-adolescent phase. They're now feathering out resplendently and there's such variety! They all have the jowly ear-tufts and blue-grey legs and feet characteristic of their breed, but we have everything from white-with-grey to deep brick-red-and-black to golden yellow, black and brown.

We seem to have a pretty even mix of pullets and cockerels. We will need to choose just one cockerel to raise to rooster-dom. There's one that looks a lot like Skunk, or favourite-ever chicken. He's even got the green-black iridescence starting to show on his tail feathers. At this point there are a couple of front-runners (based on personality and colouration) but I'm not ready to choose yet.

Nestlings

Ever kid should have a nest of baby birds to watch every year.

Bear stories

Last week it was beautiful and sunny and I decided to sneak in a quick afternoon run. I took the highway out towards the junction to the east of us. Typically this highway has only very light traffic, and it's beautifully scenic. I did my 20-minute jogging warmup and then started up my heart-rate monitor and my Garmin GPS watch for what was supposed to be an easy endurance run.

A red minivan with out-of-province plates passed me, going fairly slowly, then immediately slowed to a crawl. It was travelling in front of me at about 10 km/h, matching my speed. It was creepy. I was by myself on foot, 20 minutes from home on a remote, little-travelled secondary highway and now this van was behaving very strangely. I tried to look confident and nonchalant, and I avoided looking at the van, not wanting to make eye contact.

On the Garmin tracing above you can see the red arrow which is the point where the van pulled in front of me. My pace (bars at the bottom) slowed down a little, so that I could stay well back from the van. But my heart rate (red line) blipped up a bit despite the slower pace, because I was, well, a little freaked out about the creepy tourists I guess.

The van continued in front of me at a crawl for a good minute or more. Focused on avoiding eye contact with the psychopathic out-of-towners, it took me a long time to look anywhere but at the road three metres in front of me. Finally I glanced to the left.

There was a bear. Right there. I had almost run past it by that point. It was just on the shoulder of the road about 10 metres from me. At most. It was looking at me curiously, without any fear. Kind of a weird-looking bear, like it was having a bad hair day or something. Small to medium sized, maybe 2 or 3 years old. But yikes, it was so close. I veered to the other side of the road and though I tried to avoid doing anything to startle it, it seems from my Garmin tracing (blue arrow) that I picked up my pace a lot, and my heart rate took another big jump. Bear stayed put, I carried on around the next curve. The driver of the minivan, seeing that I was now safely past the bear he had clearly spotted, sped away.

Now, I see bears with some regularity when running. I usually wave and shout and they run off and I don't think again about it. This incident became story-worthy because of my tourist-paranoia and my obliviousness that let me get that close without noticing, not because it seemed a particularly dangerous situation. But for some reason, for a few days after that, I kept mentioning to friends and family members how I was feeling kind of spooked about risks from wildlife while running. I'd never felt that way before. It was weird.

It took about five days, and a wildlife report from a neighbour, for the penny to drop. That was a grizzly. That was not one of the shiny cute black bears (that actually come in various shades of cinnamony brown as well) that I've become so nonchalant about over my 20 years in the Kootenays. In my memory I realized I had a clear picture of the scooped face, the jowly tufts of grizzled fur backlit by the sunshine. And yes, our neighbours had had a grizzly in their garden, and seen it up close through their window a few times, and had it bluff-charged a friend's truck when he stopped and rolled down his window to take some photos. And my description of the roadside bear was a perfect match.

I'd never seen a grizzly before in the wild. We know they live around here, usually up in the subalpine zone though. So it's very unusual to see one close to town. This guy is probably a 2-year-old, off trying to fend for itself for its first spring without mama. I hope it makes a U-turn and heads back up the pass soon.

I'm still running the road and trails out that direction, but with more awareness, and more often with other people. Thinking of carrying bear spray.

So then a couple of evenings ago I did a quick barefoot run along the same highway. Our driveway is rough and gravelly, so I wore my Minimus shoes while walking the 400 metres up to the road. When I got to the top of the driveway I shucked my shoes and left them, as usual, near our highway-number-sign. I had a nice, uneventful 30-minute run. Got back on the dark side of dusk and peered in the weeds for my shoes.

Only one shoe was there. Had I kicked the other off and let it fly? No, I was pretty sure I'd set both down together side by side. I wondered if maybe my family was playing a joke on me, but that didn't make sense: the driveway is a long way to walk from the house, and anyway they wouldn't have known I was leaving my shoes. I looked all through the weeds and grass. No shoe. Finally, about 20 metres down the driveway in the dim light beneath the overhanging trees I spotted a dark lump that looked like it might be shoe-sized. I walked over and picked the item up. It was a slobbery wet Minimus with two neat puncture marks in the sole.

I hadn't heard anything, but then I was busily looking for my shoe in the brush, thinking some human (me or my kids) had done something silly. Likely a bear (a black bear, I assume, optimistically!) was curiously mouthing my shoe as I arrived back from my run, dropping it and running off when I startled it.

I rinsed my beloved Minimus with a hose, let it dry, and it's perfectly wearable.

Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep

Our new batch of Ameracauna chicks arrived via the post office this morning. While we had had success breeding our own stock in the past, we lost all our chickens when we left the homestead undefended by both human and dog while Sophie's appendix was bursting on our non-vacation last year.

So we're starting from scratch again, if you'll pardon the pun. This batch is nicely varied in colour with a number of lovely coppery chicks as well as the standard yellow-black stripey sort. Our basement is full of cheeps and chirps and it glows with the red of the heat lamp.

Wolf

Only in a small town can a guy roll in on Monday, visit with a few friends, offer to do a talk on wolves and a visit with his own "pet" wolf, and get a full fifth of the community's residents out to the event a mere two days later. Standing room only.

Fiona took this picture. She got up close and personal with Tundra. Heck, everybody did. Scrubs and cuddles and licks and sniffs and those piercing eyes looking as if into our souls. We learned a lot about wolf behaviour and about the complex ecology of top-order predators. Who'd have guessed that re-introducing wolves would produce massive increases in waterfowl populations? Why? Because without wolves, ungulates over-graze and prevent the growth of saplings that beavers rely on. Without beavers, wetlands are severely reduced. Without wetlands there are no waterfowl.

Tundra was a pretty amazing, magical creature. Her strength, intelligence, grace and alertness were so engaging. I was pleased that her owner spoke at length about why having a wolf for a pet is generally a really bad idea. The main reason he came back to was that the bond between himself as pack leader and the wolf is so strong that they simply cannot be parted. No flights, no non-wolf-friendly holidays, no pet-sitters. That and the four or more vigorous walks a day ... for up to 18 years.

There are wild wolves around here, though I've only seen one once -- a fleeting glimpse from a bridge. We're very glad to have met this one, even if she's a human-conditioned ambassador for the species rather than a wild animal.

Limpet's update

It's true I had a rocky first week. Had to go see the vet again, was admitted to hospital and watched overnight. Finally felt like eating again after 5 days, but that kibble I used to eat? Not what an injured dog deserves. So I held out and eventually my people acquiesced and gave me canned food. Felt better for the food.

Then I made a mistake one day ... forgot myself and ate some kibble. I tried to hold out again for the canned stuff, but they were onto me. Eventually I gave up and started eating the dry stuff again. A dog can get used to anything, I guess.

The cone. Hated that cone. Once my bruises were better I discovered that by contorting myself I could get my nether regions twisted around so that they'd fit into the cone. Perfect for licking myself silly, which I set to doing. I also became an expert at bashing into my peeps' legs with it. The family eventually got it. Figured the cone wasn't doing anything anyway, besides tripping me up. So off it came. I rewarded this trusting gesture by laying off a lot of my licking.

My burns have gradually improved. I'd say they're about halfway healed in now. Still oozy and gross. If you drop by for a visit I'll happily lift my leg and show you, and you'll probably say "ewwwww, gross!" but they don't feel too bad. And I get around pretty well. I'm back to chasing my kong and playing "tug" and doing the "roll over" thing that seems to please the humans to no end, simple creatures that they are.

The only worrisome lingering effect of all this is the startling self-righteous boldness the cat has assumed since my accident. This will have to be dealt with.

Sad yet miraculous story

Limpet, our dog, has a "thing" about the van. She gets very excited when we leave and loves chasing us. She doesn't do this with other vehicles, not even Chuck's truck, but she knows the kids and I are normally in the van, and she gets very excited. Normally she barks a bit and races up the grass at the side of driveway. She stays off the road and it's kind of funny how hard she runs. The long uphill is what she enjoys the most -- she goes flat out until she runs out of juice and gives up about halfway up the hill. When we're gone she hangs out by the house and doesn't normally hear us until we've already done the hill. She comes cheerily towards us, usually meeting up with us at the carport.

I had to pick Erin up at work on Saturday afternoon. I took the van and Limpet did her usual "chase" routine. Ten minutes later I returned home. While I was gone a couple of friends were over and they were looking at decking lumber with Chuck in one of the sheds tucked into the edge of the forest off beside the steep downhill part of the driveway. Limpet was with them rather than in her usual location by the house. And so she was alerted much earlier than usual to our arrival home. Her poor brain misfired, I think. She thought "van! driveway hill!" and peeled out of the woods in heady hope of a chase up the driveway.

Unfortunately I wasn't going up. I was going down. And the point where she hit the driveway was about 2 metres beyond the obscuring corner of forest, and about 2 metres beyond where I was travelling at 20 km/h. I slammed on the breaks. It's gravel. I just skidded. The dog disappeared under the front grill.

It was awful. There were sickening dog-screams. She was trapped. You've heard me rant before about the lack of ground clearance of this vehicle. There was almost no room under there. Though I hadn't felt myself run her over with the tires, I couldn't believe there was room underneath for her. Chuck and the other two came running and looked. I was told to roll forward a couple of feet.

And then the dog took off running, tail between her legs. On all fours, looking very much abashed, but apparently almost as right as rain.

Still, it wasn't as miraculous as all that. She was covered in grease and smelled of burnt fur. She started limping. She didn't seem to want to change position. Going from standing to lying down proved excruciating. She didn't eat or drink. She went off and hid under the laundry stoop.

We finally got her to the vet today. She has no broken bones, but she's got a nasty burn in her groin area which she's been licking horribly, along with a lot of other bruising and general soft-tissue injuries. She's in a cone, which she's not at all pleased with, and on antibiotics and painkillers. She's not really eating or eliminating well yet. She did get down a deer sausage or two, but that's it for the past couple of days.

We had planned to go camping this week, but that was nixed. Now we nurse the dog instead. But it's pouring buckets of rain, so camping wouldn't exactly have been idyllic either.

The neighbour lambs

Our neighbours have a tiny homestead which comprises a huge veggie garden, dairy cattle, rabbits, turkeys, chickens (meat birds and layers), goats and sheep. The goats and cow have birthed already and we're into a (late) lambing season now. Sometimes we get a phone call when an animal is birthing. Sometimes we just happen by.

The other day Fiona and I were finishing a run when we noticed a sheep grunting in the field. We stopped by and watched the rest of the process. And the same day Sophie, Fiona and I all visited with a couple of the newborn lambs.

These two are twins -- one strong, one weaker. The darker little boy was easily following mama around within a few minutes, poking around and figuring the udder thing out on his own. The white little girl lamb needed to be helped to stand and nurse. So far she's doing well, getting stronger.

We like this vicarious homesteading experience our neighbours are providing us with. They're new to it all themselves, and their enthusiasm and resilience in the face of misadventures is a pleasure to observe. Certainly they've debunked for us most of the romance and glamour of the self-sufficient lifestyle. We are inspired by their hard work and resourcefulness. But it's not a simple life, that's for sure.

Still, in a greening meadow in the spring, lambs are rather fine.

Predatory near-tragedy

The seven hatched chicks, now heading into adolescence and standing 8 to 10 inches tall, were moved out to the chicken coop a week or so ago. They hunkered inside the henhouse at first, intimidated by the older generation. Overall things were going well. The big chickens were scarfing the little ones' higher-nutrient food, but other than that they'd been respecting each other pretty well and there wasn't any undue aggression.

Today I guess the little guys finally got comfortable enough to start looking for adventure in the far reaches of the outdoor corral. And alas, they discovered a crack large enough to allow for escape. Noah noticed a couple of small chickens sallying around the smithy and sent up the alarm.

We ran outside in the chilly downpour and quickly had four of the five escapees back in the coop. But one was missing, and ominously so was the dog. We knew right away that they were together and that the scene wasn't going to be a pretty one. After quickly securing the escapees, stopping up the crack, we found the dog on the lawn with a small feathery lump. The lump wasn't moving and was soggy and significantly defeathered. I looked closely and it was apparent that it was still breathing but there was blood and flesh showing. I picked it up and resigned myself to breaking its neck to put it out of its misery, something I knew was going to be horrifically difficult to do.

But then I looked more closely. Its eyes were open; it moved its legs a little. What had looked at first to be an open neck wound was just a large raw defeathered area. There was a similar area on one wing. A little blood, a lot of missing feathers, but more mess and slobber and baldness than actual damage.

We brought the poor fellow inside and put him under the heat lamp to dry out. Initially he looked like a monster-sized freshly-hatched chick with the addition of blood and bald patches. Unable to stand, he lay trembling and limp in the box, still a sodden lump. I told the kids I thought he probably wouldn't still be alive in a few hours.

But gradually he's drying out, warming up and looking much better. With his remaining feathers dried out a bit and some muscle tone returning the raw bald flesh on his neck doesn't look like the gaping wound it did at first. He's eating and drinking now, getting up on his feet and shuffling around a bit. Maybe he'll make it. If he escapes without infection he'll likely regrow some plumage in a few weeks and be ready to rejoin the coop. We're all rooting for him.

Girl and dog

We had sunshine a few times today. And snow up on the ridges. And rain here several times. And hail.

At one well-timed moment, Fiona and the dog got out for a walk. Here they are heading up the driveway towards the highway. Limpet loves her walks and runs. Even if the pace is slow she comes back happy and tired.

It's lovely to have cotton-shirt weather and sunshine, even if it only lasts half an hour at a time.

Pip's midnight adventure

Last night I was putting Fiona to bed when she commented on the rhythmic shrill cheeping coming from the basement. At first she thought it was some sort of electronic alarm. "Oh, it's just a chick," she said, after listening again. I almost thought nothing of it. We can often hear the chicks from upstairs. But the fact that Fiona had noticed this particular cheeping as unusual made me wonder.

Sophie and I went down to see why someone was making such a racket at midnight. Nothing seemed amiss in the chick box. Except then I did a double-take and realized that there were only six chicks. There was Peep, diligently giving a noisy distress call, with only five siblings beside him.

There was a brief "oh no!" moment. Our basement is very small but there are about a million places for a frightened chick to hide. But Pip was quickly located tucked in behind the back corner of the box. Just sitting there, quietly wondering what had happened to his family, and where the lovely warm red light had gone. He was none the worse for wear.

The chick box now has a chick-escape barrier on top.

The new little family

For now they're either named 10, 12, 13, 17, 19, 20 and 22 or else Pip, Peep, Poop, Chip, Cheep, Choop and Lamarr. That's Lamarr/22 in the bottom right. He's the smallest, having just hatched out last night, while Pip/10 is the hulking thing in the middle. They'll get their permanent names as they feather out and exert their personalities.

They're almost needing bigger digs. Fiona and I will be picking up a proper chick waterer today and we'll have to recycle a large cardboard box to house them for the next month or so until they're ready to be outside.

If anyone has any tips for introducing new chicks to an existing flock without too much hen-pecking trauma we're all ears.

Today's Uglee

The Chick Formerly Known as Egg 13 hatched just as we headed off to the regional Suzuki Celebration Concert this morning. We were able to watch him emerge from his shell and snap a photo of him in a state of maximum ugliness. Egg 17, visible below him in the photo, is the next in line to hatch, so it'll be Thursday or so before we get another little Uglee. By then this guy will be the cutest little ball of fluff in the universe. Hard to believe.

Another hatching

Yesterday just before the choir concert we noticed that Egg 12 was moving about and peeping. By bedtime it had a small crack and pip hole. We were pretty sure that we'd have another chick by morning. And indeed ...


... there it was. Still wet and ugly, not always capable of balancing its head up off the floor of the incubator, but perking up gradually after its exhausting fight out of its shell. This one has a bit of reddish colouring. I wonder if it will look a bit like Skunk, our favourite chicken ever, who met an untimely death at the claws of a black bear a year and a half ago. Skunk was an Ameraucana with red and iridescent green-black plumage.


Then again, it's really hard to tell with Ameraucana chicks. Here is The Former Egg 10, all fluffed up and downy. This is pretty much what Skunk looked like when we got him from the hatchery as a day-old -- he didn't give us even a hint of his mature colouring as a hatchling, and it was only later that we began to see his colours. So time will tell. Pullets, cockerels, red, wheaten, silvery, who knows?

I'm a grandma!

I was at work this morning when the 'back door' phone rang in my office. I excused myself, explaining to my patient that my younger kids were home alone and that I needed to answer the phone which they knew was only for very important things, and had never used before.

"We have some very exciting news," said Fiona's voice from the other end of the line. "We have a chick!"

This little guy hatched from egg #10 (laid on the 10th, the first egg we suspected was fertile), meaning he's a day earlier than we expected. His cheeping had awoken Noah whose bedroom is next door. The kids had looked after him wonderfully and were really excited by the whole experience. We have at least four more chicks expected over the next ten days or so.

Incubator update

We made a very primitive egg-candler out of an office lamp, some duct tape and a piece of cardboard. It doesn't give a very good light seal, but we're using it as best we can. There is a stark difference between some of our eggs, and so we believe that a number of them are fertile. We've been candling every 2nd night or so. The eggs are labelled by the date they were laid and put in the incubator.

Eggs 5, 6 and 9 look like the did the days they were laid, with a bit of a yellowish cast from their yolks and an air space and that's all.

Eggs 10, 12 and 13 are definitely different. They had spidery blood vessels a week ago and are now almost completely opaque, except for the air space.

Egg 17 is showing some blood vessels and seems to be well on its way. It's too soon to tell with eggs 19, 20 and 21.

I guess it makes a certain amount of sense that the hen's first three eggs of the season were infertile. We always think of those first eggs as "practice eggs." Often we find a soft-shelled, misshapen or unusually teeny egg amongst those first few of the season.

One one side the eggs have suns drawn on them in pencil, with the date written in the sun. On the other we have drawn a crescent moon. This way we know whether they've been turned yet in the morning or evening. This works well, since our incubator-tending is a collaborative thing. The kids are fairly sure Chuck will remember to look after the eggs while they're in Calgary later this week, turning them twice a day, checking the temperature and humidity in the incubator and adjusting as necessary. I am hopeful. They're due to start hatching around May 1-3. So far the incubator has worked like a charm, keeping the temperature very stable at exactly 100 °F.

PP attacked me today when I went to clean the water trough out. He seems to have discovered his roosterly self. Good news from a breeding standpoint, thoough I would not wish to be locked in the coop with him!