On puzzles and cats... and rabbits, oh my!

I have been thinking lately about puzzles. Puzzles and puzzle competitions. I don't know if there is such a thing as jigsaw puzzle competitions, but if they do exist I imagine them to be somewhat like chess tournaments: a large room filled with groups of people (because puzzling is always more fun with a partner or two) all working on puzzles while sitting at their individual tables, with the goal of finishing the fastest. The winners from each round would then compete against each other, repeating the process until eventually one winning group is determined. Or something like that.

But how to make each successive round more difficult? Ahh, I have the perfect suggestion. After each round, more cats and rabbits are added to the room. Why cats and rabbits, you ask? This is because cats, as evidenced by the photos above, love to sit in or on puzzle boxes, covering as many pieces as possible, and knocking off pieces onto the floor as they settle themselves. (At least that's what my cats do.) And what about the rabbits? They'll do what rabbits do best: chew. And here you thought what rabbits do best is mating, but you're wrong: chewing on things, especially expensive things, is their most favorite hobby. Any puzzle pieces that happen to fall on the floor will be susceptible to predation by wandering rabbits. A chomp, a bite, and your puzzle piece is gone. (At least that's what my rabbits do.) Well, it sounds like a good idea to me, anyway.

Where's Minna?

This just in: the Life on the Unfarm blog is now illustrated!

I finally broke down and bought a digital camera last weekend, so here are the first few photos of Minna.

Maggie is rarely more than a few feet from Minna at any given time, which is why, when I looked out in the garden and saw Maggie without Minna I was mildly concerned. Not a full blown panic but worried enough to go out and investigate. It didn't take long for Minna to pop her head out of the middle of the daylily, and then disappear back into it again. So here we go: Minna in her hiding spot in the daylily. Enjoy.

Rustic Round Loaf, etc

I have, for the last twenty minutes, tried to come up with an amusing description of my day, a few charming stories of the goings on at the Unfarm today, and a clever segue into my bread recipe, but I've come up empty handed. I am, apparently, all out of good ideas for today. I blame my 9am two hour accounting final. Well, whatever the reason, the words aren't coming to me and I will have to content myself with a less than spectacular blog. Here goes nothing.


My day, except for the accounting final and my late afternoon ennui, was not very noteworthy. I have no idea how I did on my final, I can only hope that I passed it so that I never have to deal with accounting again. I also have no idea what triggered the case of ennui, but the result was that for a couple of hours I was completely unmotivated to do anything other than lie on the couch and stare at pictures of me as a five year old. I eventually forced myself off the couch and went out to put the chickens away, bring the ducks in, and (in a burst of motivation) take the dogs out for a walk. Somewhere in between the final and the ennui I decided to finally try out a bread recipe I've had for a few weeks. It's surprisingly simple to make, turned out well and looks like one of those fancy rustic style loaves of bread you see in gourmet bakeries. But you don't have to take my word for it... (notice the Reading Rainbow reference??)

Rustic Round Loaf
*you'll need a 6-8 quart cast iron pot with a lid

3 cups bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast (or 1 packet)
1 1/2 cups water (between 120 and 130 degrees F)
olive oil as needed

Mix the flour, salt, and yeast in a large bowl, and then add the water and stir with a wooden spoon until it's blended. The dough will be "shaggy." Let it rest in the bowl in a warm room (70 degrees F) for 4 hours. Spray some olive oil onto a work surface (I just used a metal cookie sheet - I figured the bread board would be too sticky) and knead the dough a couple times. Cover the dough loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest another 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 450 F, placing the pot in the oven as it heats. When the dough is ready, take the pot out, put the dough into it, put the lid on, and bake it for 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and bake for another 15 to 30 minutes until it is golden brown. Remove the bread and let it cool on a rack. Voila.


Things on the Unfarm have been quiet today, for the most part, with the exception of the rabbits, who are conspiring against me to get in as much trouble as possible. They are spending the evening launching a coordinated attack against the cardboard box that holds the fire escape ladder. I'll chase one of them away only to turn around and discover that the other one has taken advantage of the opportunity to sneak in behind me and start tearing at the cardboard again. Cardboard, it would seem, is one of the four food groups of rabbits. Occasionally the bunnies will leave the cardboard alone and move on to chewing the wood trim around the closet. This is why I do not generally let the rabbits have their free time when I can't be there to supervise. It always results in property damage. The only thing that could cause more damage would be to turn a beaver loose in here. Which, the way I tend to attract animals, is not an altogether impossible situation...

A thought or two on school

I have been in college for eons. The Grand Canyon was just a ditch in Arizona when I started school. Like I said, eons. After years of drifting somewhat aimlessly through the land of Academia I finally have a plan in place. I have an adviser and a checklist and everything. I also have - much to my dismay - over 100 credits still to go.

I am currently slogging my way through accounting and statistics - two classes I had hoped never to have to take, but for some reason they are needed, apparently, when you major in animal science. I will, of course, use them constantly in my career as a chicken wrangler (or whatever it is I decide to do.) That was sarcasm, in case you missed it.

There is one good thing that will come out of my three month foray into statistics: I have produced pages and pages of notes that I plan to roast vegan marshmallows over after finals. (If I wasn't going to try to recoup my losses on the cost of my ridiculously expensive statistics textbook by selling it back, I would probably roast that too - and enjoy it.)

My frustration with the current curriculum is exacerbated by the fact that I am not happy with anything less than a perfect score, and let me assure you that I am scoring well below perfect. It doesn't matter how many times I tell myself that it doesn't really matter what grade I get in statistics as long as I pass it, I have yet to convince myself that that is indeed the truth.

But while I continue to learn about standard deviations and bank reconciliations life continues as usual on the Unfarm. Minna's mobility has vastly improved and she even hobbles around the yard a bit now, with Maggie as her guard, keeping the chickens away. Kita's weight loss progress has stalled - partly because his arthritis is slowing him down, and partly because I caught him buried up to his shoulders in a bag of dog food the other day, munching away. The chickens have decided once again, for reasons they don't feel the need to share with us, that they will not go into their coop in the evening on their own. This means that if we cannot bribe them to come in with squirrel food, we will have to play yet another round of night time chicken wrangling, chasing the chickens all over the yard until we finally catch them. And finally, I woke up in the middle of the night last night to discover Buddy was throwing up on my bed. How pleasant. But then again, it was just another day on the Unfarm.

Welcome to the Neighborhood

The pasture across the street from the Unfarm is almost equal parts grass and blackberry bushes, with a couple wild apple trees and several hawthorns sprinkled in here and there as well. There are also a couple of places in the southwest corner where poison oak has settled in. (This fact I discovered by accident a few summers back. It was quite uncomfortable and needless to say, I have no trouble identifying poison oak now.) In the far west edge of the pasture a small stream flows out of the forest and trickles its way through the pasture.

The stream is rather small - it doesn't support fish, or even any crayfish, that I have ever seen - and by the middle of summer it is often just a trickle in places. Which is why I was surprised to discover, two summers ago, that some beavers had taken up residence there. Where they came from I have no idea, as the forest and pasture are a sort of island in the middle of suburbia and I wasn't aware that we had any beavers anywhere in the area, let alone near enough to consider immigrating to our neck of the woods. But immigrate they did - although I suspect they did not go through the proper governmental channels and are residing there illegally - and they promptly began altering the area to suit their tastes. It was actually somewhat amazing to watch the transformation. Every so often during the spring and summer I would shimmy between the wire fencing around the pasture, and amble down to the edge of the pasture to check out the renovations. Over the course of the last two years the beavers have built at least one impressively sturdy dam, taken down well over twenty trees, made a large clearing, and created two small lakes where the stream once was.

The beavers have been great neighbors so far, even though they are elusive - I have yet to spot one, but I did once come upon a deer enjoying a drink from the lake - but tonight I have discovered an unexpected bonus. Apparently the creation of a new lake, however small it may be, is big news among the locals. Word has gotten out and a multitude of frogs have taken up residence alongside the beavers. I love the sound of the frogs croaking away in the spring but up until this year the only frogs we ever heard were the one or two tree frogs who have found their way onto the Unfarm. Not that I didn't appreciate their attempts, but there's something about the sound of a chorus of frogs that is sort of comforting, in a way. It reminds me of the country, I suppose.

So welcome to the neighborhood, little ones. Now if only I could convince a bat to move into our bat house. I wonder if they work through a realtor...

It's official... spring is here

Spring is here. Okay, not technically, but for all intents and purposes it's spring. How do I know this? Because a few weeks ago I heard from the peacock for the first time, and just a couple of nights ago as I was falling asleep I heard the Great Horned owl that lives in the woods near our house.

The peacock, I should mention, is not ours. It lives on a small farm on the hill across from us, with the owl's woods in between us. In the fall and winter it tends to stick closer to home, but in the spring and summer it goes on walkabout looking for other peacocks. Unfortunately, we are rather low on peacocks in this area but that doesn't stop it from wandering. We even got a visit from it two springs ago - it came to the Unfarm in the evening and stayed all the next day before moving on again. I think the chickens attracted it in the first place, but weren't enough of an enticement for it to stay for any length of time. (The chickens, for their part, didn't quite know what to do with this GIANT bird in their yard, so they did their best to ignore it. It wasn't easy - he was quite a spectacle.)

The garden is also showing signs of life again: we have three crocuses (the last hold outs in the battle against the animals) that are up and blooming, a great many scilla have started re-emerging, and the daylilies are now a few inches tall. Oh, and the primroses - the primroses are making their come back.

That is how I know it's spring. This is not to say that the weather will be all blue skies and sunshine from now on - far from it, as we still have about three months left of the rainy season. These last few sunny days are simply a fluke, designed by the Pacific Northwest weather gods to torment those of us who choose to live here: they give us just enough good weather to send us into a sun induced euphoria, only to swamp us in again with clouds and rain from one end of the horizon to the other. But I've seen this trick before so I know to enjoy the sun but expect the rain, at least until June.

I suppose it is somewhat of a blessing then, that I am currently taking statistics and accounting - the homework keeps me occupied when I might otherwise be tempted to work in the garden. The amount of clay in our soil is good for the plants, but it means that the ground can't be worked until it has been sunny and warm for a couple of weeks at least, once the winter has ended. Until then, I get to spend my days learning about conditional probabilities and writing up financial statements. Does life get any better? (I certainly hope so.)

Destination: Panic, ETA: now

Good evening everyone, and thank you for flying Anxiety Air. Please fasten your seat belts and keep your chairs in the upright position. Our final destination today is Panic and our ETA is... now.

How did I end up here again? How is it that I seem to attract animals with less than ideal health? (Not that I love them any less - my animals are my world.) Let's review - a cat with hyperthyroidism that led to heart failure, a chicken that needed a hysterectomy, a duck with "failure to thrive" (meaning that there was something wrong with Kodi, but the vets couldn't figure out what exactly it was) and two rabbits who succumbed to severe gastrointestinal problems, one right after the other. And now here I am again, sitting in the vet's office with my duck, Minna, hoping and praying for good news.

When we last left our story, Minna was under the weather and I was contemplating a vet visit if she didn't show improvement by the morning. So, Monday morning, with no visible improvement, I packed her up (and Maggie, who would rather sit inside next to Minna all day long than spend even ten minutes outside without her) and headed to vet number three: the bird specialist. The diagnosis? A pinched nerve from laying an egg. The treatment: five days of Celebrex. If she still hasn't shown any improvement by Thursday morning, I'll need to recheck with the vet. Leaving the vet's office, I felt fairly optimistic - the medicine would work and Minna would regain the use of her leg. Need I say that today is Thursday and she still hadn't improved? The new plan is to finish the Celebrex and start a course of antibiotics (she produced two soft shelled eggs this week, prompting the vet to suspect an infection in her uterus.) If there is still no improvement by Saturday morning, Minna will head back to the vet for a cortisone shot.

Needless to say, I have been in a panic all week, and it is only getting worse with each passing day that Minna fails to improve. I am praying that she recovers from this, as I am nowhere near being ready to say goodbye to another of my little ones. I will add updates when I can. Prayers for Minna's quick recovery are much appreciated.

News from the Unfarm

Minna is under the weather. I noticed her limping when she came in for dinner this evening and - although concerned - I wasn't overly worried. It is not the first time I have seen one or the other of the ducks limping and while I keep an eye on them, it has always gone away after a bit. Ducks are a fairly hardy animal, not too prone, for the most part, to getting sick. And although I am a bit of a worrier as mothers go, I was not letting my fears get the best of me when the ducks came in this evening. They ate dinner as usual: Maggie has a few bites and Minna finishes off the rest of the bowl, and came in to play in the water bowl as they always do, then headed off to bed.

But it is now, what?, 12:01, and I am in the midst of a full blown panic. Since settling down for bed this evening Minna has now deteriorated into laying a bit on her side and not moving. She is alert and awake, but she isn't moving. Not even to get water, and Minna rarely passes up a chance to play in the water bowl in the evening. I am praying that it is only a very sore leg that has her so low, and that she will be better in the morning. If, by then, she hasn't laid an egg yet I might set her up in the bathroom with a heater to see if perhaps she's become egg bound. (Egg binding is a relatively common affliction in the bird world and it has the potential to become serious - if they can't pass the egg it will need to be massaged out, if possible, and if it breaks while still inside it can lead to dangerous infections.) Being somewhere warm is supposed to help them pass the egg. If she is not egg bound, and continues to deteriorate, I may have to get her in to see the vet. We have three different vets: one for the dogs and cats, one for the rabbits, and another one for the chickens and ducks. All told, I'm sure that over the years we have shelled out enough to each clinic to pay for a new addition to be named after us.

For the moment, because it is midnight, there is not much I can do - the emergency vet has very little experience working with ducks and/or chickens, as we have discovered over the years - so I am hoping that keeping her calm and quiet and letting her rest on a soft towel will help her to feel better. I am trying my best to be a decent nursemaid to Minna but I have discovered that Maggie, while very attached to Minna, is never destined to join the medical profession. At the moment she is sleeping on the majority of the towel I put in for Minna but I don't dare move her off of it - Maggie sitting is a vast improvement over Maggie standing. Before she settled down she was walking around near the gate, hoping I would let her out again, and the fact that Minna was in the way did not bother her in the least. She stepped all over Minna as she walked back and forth, and Minna looked decidedly uncomfortable - understandable considering she is only half the size of Maggie. Maggie did not look remorseful in the slightest. But then, I don't think ducks are all that familiar with remorse, as a rule.

In other Unfarm news, Aspen has been turning his nose up at his usual favorite for the last three nights. Evaporated milk has always been his drink of choice, so when he walked away from the bowl of milk again tonight - and it was the regular stuff, not the skim milk that he has never liked - I finally figured out what it was he was after. The whipped cream. Ever since I made the mistake of giving him some one night, he has decided that when we have it in the fridge he is entitled to that in place of his milk. Or on top of his milk. Whichever we choose - he is, after all, a very accommodating cat.

A thought or two on fire

I started a fire this evening - in the fireplace, of course. (I do not recommend starting fires anywhere else in your house. I imagine it is not conducive to keeping a roof over your head.) I was supposed to be reading the latest scintillating chapter in my Financial Accounting textbook but it was - as usual - more boring than watching paint dry. (On the plus side, I no longer have any trouble falling asleep at night - a page or two of accounting and I'm out like a light.) Sitting in front of the fireplace, not reading my accounting homework, I started to stare at the fire. And the more I watched it, the more I came to the conclusion that fire is like a house cat. Both are things you want to curl up near. Both are interesting to watch. Both are enjoyed best when they are somewhat tamed. And finally, house cats and fires are both safest when small. You wouldn't want a tiger roaming your kitchen any more than you want a raging fire burning through your bedroom.

With that said, I am off to work on my homework. I was finally able to finish my chapter of assigned accounting reading, and have moved on to the even more awful Introduction to the Practice of Sadistics. Or Statistics. Whatever. Same thing.

5:00 and all's dark

It is, as the title of this post suggests, 5:00. Or 5:21, to be exact, and the house is dark. I have a mountain of homework still to do but it will have to wait. The chickens have taken to roosting near the house when it gets dark, as opposed to going into their coop as they usually do.

The last time the chickens avoided their coop like this it was because a rat had taken up residence in the gap between the top of the nest box and the roof. Our rats, it seems, are somewhat wimpy and had decided that there was no reason to spend the winter in a muddy tunnel under the shed when they could luxuriate in the warmth of the heated coop. This was fine for the rat but it made the chickens understandably nervous to be shut up in their house with it all night long.

So when the ladies started hanging out near the house again I went out and checked the coop: no rat above the nest boxes and no rat in the straw underneath the nest boxes either. Why the chickens are choosing to roost on the deck, then, I do not know. Maybe they see the ducks getting to come inside every night and have decided that having a coop all to themselves isn't all it's cracked up to be. This would be fine if it weren't for the coyotes, opossums (North America's only marsupial!) and raccoons who would love a chicken dinner. So the ladies have to spend their nights in the safety of the armored coop (so named because it was built with at least 100 bolts and all ventilation windows are covered with 1/2 inch hardware cloth, to keep raccoon paws out), no exceptions.

How then do you get three chickens to go into their coop when the don't want to? Strategy number one, the strategy currently being employed, is to turn on the light in the chicken coop (we keep a light in the coop when it's cold to heat it up at night for them) and turn off all the lights in the house and hope that the girls make their way to the coop on their own - they seem to be attracted to light when it gets dark out. Strategy two, assuming strategy one has failed, is to go out with the flashlight, find the chickens wherever they've decided to curl up for the night, pick them up and carry them to the coop. "That doesn't seem that bad," you may now be thinking. After all, how hard is it to put a chicken in a coop. Ah, you don't have chickens, yourself, then. If you did, you would realize that this is easier said than done.

First, you must find three relatively small birds in a fairly large yard, and chickens rarely come when called - especially at night. Then you have to catch them. I can carry three chickens at once, but actually catching all three at the same time almost never happens. What usually occurs ends up looking something like this: approach chickens with flashlight. Chickens see you and take off running in three different directions. Follow chickens, leaving flashlight behind in order to have hands free to catch birds. Chickens run under bushes and trees. Human crawls under said bush or tree only to see the chicken's tail feathers running out the other side. Human crawls out from under the bush and chases another chicken. Second chicken runs under deck and comes out on the other side of the yard. Human follows and chicken runs under a tree on this side of the yard. Human yells and trips over a bucket in the dark. Human finally catches a chicken and deposits it in the coop, then leaves the chicken run to retrieve another bird. Chicken in the coop hops out the front door, which was left open in the hopes of one of the remaining loose chickens going in voluntarily. Human wonders what possessed them to buy chickens in the first place. 15 minutes later all three chickens are in the coop and human is thoroughly ticked off. Process repeats the next night, and the next, and the next....

It's now completely dark outside and from where my computer is I can see into the coop. And it's empty. So off I go on the Great Chicken Chase. Again.