Creepiness to end all Creepiness

To those of you who wanted this, I hate you. I don't do creepy things. This thing is creepy. But you wanted it, so here it is. I did it for you. Because I loved you. Note the past tense of the verb, love. Loved. I don't love you anymore. At least not today. I'm just too totally creeped out to love anyone right now.

Going up is bad enough; looking down gives me the heebie jeebies!

The ladder into Brigget's hay loft is long and narrow. It’s also old and wooden. When Brigget is home, she climbs the ladder. She's a good friend. She knows I whine and obsess over climbing up there. But since Brigget is not always home, I've found myself climbing it anyway. Not gracefully. My knuckles are white and my knees are shaking. But I do get up there. I was just beginning to relax about climbing that ladder when Brigget pointed out a crack in it, and wondered outloud when it would snap. Snap??? Great. Not only do I have to worry about falling out of the hay loft as I'm trying to climb the blasted thing, but I have to worry about the ladder snapping in two as well.

But for you...you lovers of creepiness...for you I climbed this rickety old ladder.

Barn owl is not happy that I've invaded the nesting area. Again.

The owls scooted on out their little exit door when they saw me. Although I had my camera with me, it wasn't the big lens, so pictures weren't great. We're still waiting for baby owls to hatch.

There are plenty of strange things in Brigget's barn.
Some may be considered creepy.

I walked around the loft, wondering where Brigget had left the creepy thing. I heard crunching beneath my feet. It was just layers of hay, I'm sure, but it wasn't a comforting sound when you're in the dark looking for spider filled creepiness. The hair on the back of my neck was standing straight up as my imagination covered all the possible reasons I’d hear crunching. I found plenty of owl poop and pellets. Even found a couple of discarded egg shells. After a full pass around the loft, I was beginning to think I wouldn’t find it, which quite honestly left me a bit relieved.

That’s when I spotted it, in all it's creepy glory. An icy cold shiver ran down my back. I looked for something to poke it with, and found a small stick. Carefully, I removed the lens cover from the camera, then squatted down alongside the thing. It looked like something a mud wasp would make, but it was split in half and was all smooth at the break. Had it been brown, and not full of creepiness, you’d think it may be a walnut.

Creepiness lurks...

But full of creepiness it was. And I could barely look through the lens to focus.

Are you happy now? Are you?

I hope you’re happy. I hope this is everything you dreamed of. Not only did I have to prod this thing apart so you could gaze upon the creepiness of it, but I had try to focus the camera on it, upload them to my computer, then resize them. That was just too much creepiness. But on top of that, I’ve now got dead spider creepiness on my blog! You’d better appreciate it, that’s all I have to say.

Meanwhile...

Back on the Farm...

I like chickens. They're fun to watch. They hunt and peck for bugs in the dirt, and scratch about in my garden creating a nice growing environment. They get down right silly about taking dust baths. But mostly I like them because they make me feel smart. Feeling smarter than a chicken may not be enough for some folks, but I'm quite content with it. While I like baths, I prefer mine in water with bubbles. And while an occasional bug may tickle my fancy, I much prefer owl barf, don't you?

River Glen Chickens

Early on in my blog, I posted about my chickens. They're not an official breed, but come from a closed flock that a friend has. She started with a few bantams, an Aracauna (they type that lays the blue eggs) and a Phoenix (long tailed.) She now has an eclectic little flock of small chickens in various colors. The 'blue', which really range from a smoke to black, tend to lay blue eggs. I took on some of her chickens last fall in hopes of further developing the blue chickens who lay blue eggs.

I must admit to not being a very diligent breeder. If I were, I'd have three or four pens of chickens, and I'd be rotating my two blue roos among my blue hens and tracking what the offspring looked like and what they layed. Instead, I've got all my chickens together, blue and pied, hens and roosters. A week before leaving on vacation, I collected all the blue eggs and placed them in the incubator. Since I've not got an automatic turner, the hatch rate will likely be low. But who knows? They're due to hatch on the 28th of this month.

Styrofoam incubator (without an automatic turner, sniff, whine.)

I've had a couple of inquiries regarding shipping hatching eggs or chicks. I hesitate to ship eggs, as I've had poor luck with purchasing eggs from other people and would hate to have that happen to one of you. I am, however, looking into shipping chicks. So if you're interested in raising some River Glen Blues, just let me know!

Upon returning from vacation I had an email from Margery saying another one of her ewes had lambed. This time it was a ram and a ewe. Part of our breeding contract was that I'd get a ewe lamb from her, and now I've got three to choose from. She's got one more ewe that may lamb this summer, but Darling and I already know which lamb we'd like. She looks like a little cow! Isn't she just the most adorable thing?

Baa Moo Ewe?

As for Darling's new critter...well...

This weekend was the youth fair, an event put on here in Whatcom County each spring. It's a short, sweet, two day event with tons of classes that the kids can choose from. They pretty much get submerged with tons of information regarding a project; anything from livestock (Darling did sheep her first couple of years) to clowning to chess. This year Darling took photography and stole my camera for the weekend. I felt naked!

The youth fair also has a live auction, and at that auction are things like pies (which sell for $100 each) and pigs. Can you guess which one we came home with? I swear, this is the world's ugliest pig! And you know the term 'squeal like a pig'? I can assure you that unless you've picked up a squealing pig, you have no clue what it means. None what so ever. I had pigs growing up, and until I picked up this pig to carry it out to the truck, I had no clue what a squealing pig sounded like.

This pig, which shall remain nameless (because we haven't come up with a good one yet), could be heard three counties away. I know, because we got calls about a potential murder at the fair grounds. People were calling 911 in Canada. You'd have thought I was skinning her alive for all the noise she made. Twelve hours later, and I'm only just now getting my hearing back.

One ugly pig. No spider is going to help this girl out!

Once home, it was time to unload The Screamer. City Boy hadn't been there when Darling and I picked her up the first time. Darling was hiding, all huddled with fingers in her ears, on the other side of the pick up. She was still suffering from Squeal Shock, which is similar to shell shock, only worse. CB couldn't figure out what her problem was. He also didn't know why I was so reluctant to climb into the back of the truck after The Screamer. He soon found out. I nudged the pig to get her to move. She grunted and clung to the bed of the truck. I pushed, I prodded, and finally she moved enough for me to get my hand under her belly. And that 's when it began all over again...

The volunteer fire department showed up about five minutes later, wondering if everyone was okay. Evidently a kind neighbor had called in, saying they were certain there was something wrong. A few minutes after that, the sheriff was there, wondering about our child who was now crouched down, shaking and sucking her thumb. "Pig...pig...pig..." was all that would come out of Darling's mouth. I had ringing in my ears, as the screaming from inside the truck canopy had echoed back and forth. City Boy had a dazed look on his face. Never in all his years had he experienced anything like The Screamer. Thankfully, the sheriff's officer had raised pigs while in FFA and it didn't take him long to figure out what the neighbor had heard. He smiled and gave a wave. I think he said something as his lips were moving, but I still couldn't hear anything.

Honestly? Even if a spider does write Some Pig in a nearby web, I'm going to be happy to eat The Screamer!

All the animals gathered to see what the commotion was about, as The Screamer goes straight to work tilling up the garden.

My first full month of blogging is over (okay, just a little more than a full month), and I'm wondering...what post have you enjoyed the most?

My personal faves are:
True Confessions of a Desperate Horsewife
All That's Left of Walter
the Swimsuit Experience
Show me a Woman With a Clean House

That's me...alluring cleavage and all! (Okay...maybe not...)
If I go from the responses to threads, I'd have to say that the Valentine's Day post concerning owl poop (or barf, as we later found out) was a popular thread. I certainly got raked over the coals for the whole City Boy Cheating thread. You didn't seem to have a problem sharing your clothing malfunctions the other day when I asked for embarrassing moments!

Of course, I've already shared that the searches which find this blog appear to be after bottoms...big ones, at that; and I'm certain they're quite disappointed to find I was merely referencing my poorly manufactured teddy bear.

The oddest search that has shown up was 'she lay decomposing in the creek'... YUK! I'm not sure which page would have popped up in correspondence to that, as I don't recall allowing anything to decompose in my highly monitored watershed of a creek that flows through here. That would just be creepy, anyway. Blecky.

So... have you got a favorite entry here? I'd love to hear what it may be.

My Friend Brigget Has a Farm

E I E I O....

Red Door...do you think this is what Liz Arden was thinking
when she named her perfume?

It's no secret that I have Farm Envy when it comes to my friend Brigget. She's got a cool old dairy barn, lovely pastures with a flock of sheep, and then there's this terrifically red door. (It's my tribute to Valentine's Day. Sorry, I don't do fancy little papercrafts.) She also has soil that I absolutely lust over. Yes, I lust after dirt. And if you were to see Brigget's dirt, you'd be lusty, too! I swear it's so nice and lofty you can just reach your arm straight down to your elbow and dig it up; no need for a tiller.

Aside from her wonderful soil, Brigget has something else. It lives in her barn; that barn who's ladder I'm not all together comfortable climbing. But climb it I did, and as previously promised, I even managed to haul my camera up with me this time so I could take some pictures of the hay mow. Or rather, what's in the hay mow.

Inside the hay mow (way up high...)

You see, Brigget has a pair of barn owls that nest there. She's got a bird house..well, owl house...up in the rafters where they raise their babies, and there's a window that they fly in and out of. As a result of raising barn owls, Brigget has a barn owl by-product; their poop. Have you ever seen barn owl poop? Well, you're about to!

The owl house inside Brigget's barn.

Owl poop is big, and it's solid. Not like that ookey, wet, white, runny stuff that falls out of birds like, say, seagull or eagles or even sparrows. No, these are called pellets, and they're bigger than anything my sheep ever produced, and really about the size as the road apples that the horses leave behind (did you know you'd be getting a lesson in poop this Valentine's Day?) They're dry and not all together repulsive; if you don't mind poop.

Poop...cool, eh?

What's cool about owl pellets is that you can break them apart and find dead things in them. Bones and such. Hair, too. In fact, I think this pellet really is just a giant hairball with bones in it. Schools buy pellets for their students to break apart and study. You, however, need not go to school to enjoy the experience! Aren't you lucky?

The owl pellet reveals the skeleton of a tiny animal. If this was a very clever website, it'd have a way for you to put that skeleton together, but we're just not that sophisticated.

Well, that about wraps it up. I've got a lot more to share on Brigget's farm, but we'll get to that in the coming days. For now, thank you for stopping in and checking out the owl poop. You can go back to your chocolate now!