The walking wounded

It is our assertion that Maximus is an indoor cat. It is Max's assertion that he should be allowed to go outside whenever he wants to. We are concerned about Max's safety while Max is primarily concerned with his fun. Needless to say we do not see eye to eye on this particular issue and Max will take any opportunity that he can to escape; which is what he did the other morning when Max sneaked upstairs and pawed open the screen door on the front deck and got out into the front yard. When we discovered his escape, Mom and I ran outside to begin searching for him and he led us on a merry chase through the front yard to underneath the trailer to under the Suburban where we were finally able to corner him. As I lay on the ground, half under the Suburban, I spotted him crawling along the undercarriage of the car and I was able to just reach his tail so I grabbed it, figuring he would follow along with it seeing as how it is attached to him. He did, but he was rather more upset than I figured he would be and he expressed his displeasure by biting my thumb. Hard.

I don't remember who gave in first, but one of us eventually let go and Max ran off, no worse for the wear while I staggered into the house, bleeding from both sides of my thumb. I am not normally a fainting sort of person but the combination of the adrenaline and the sight of my mangled thumb had me sinking to the floor in a bout of extreme dizziness and nausea. I did not pass out completely but I was useless to continue chasing Max so it was fortunate that Mom was able to catch him on her own somehow.

By the afternoon, Max was safely back in the house but my thumb still had not stopped bleeding so off we went to the urgent care. Usually it is me taking the pets to the emergency vet, so being on the receiving end of the care is a switch here on the Unfarm. I figured they would bandage it up and maybe give me some antibiotics but it turns out that the damage was worse than I had initially realized: Max had bitten clear through the nail and pulled out tissue that is supposed to stay inside the skin. (It would not surprise me in the least if it was discovered that Max's teeth actually met inside my thumb.) This meant that they had to take off part of the nail (I know, gross) in order for the wound to heal up at all. After that they were able to bandage it up and gave me a bottle of antibiotics to take for the next five days, with full recovery expected in four to six weeks. Upon learning that my tetanus shot was up to date, gotten several years ago after I was bitten by a squirrel, they gave me twice the number of pills that I actually needed. It seems they sensed a pattern in my interactions with animals and foresaw the possibility of a need for antibiotics in the future.

In the end, Max and I came to an understanding: he forgives me for pulling his tail and I forgive him for biting me. That is not to say that I don't flinch when he gets claws or teeth near me, however.

Arrivals and departures on the Unfarm

As it has been some time since I have posted anything (goodbye, resolutions) there has been some small number of arrivals and departures here on the Unfarm. A change of cast, so to speak.

The first to leave was Daphne, the mouse. This left Caroline (being the other mouse) all alone and precipitated the arrival of Evangeline - a small, grey mouse to keep Caroline company, which would have worked well had Caroline not then died soon afterward, leaving Evangeline alone. It would appear that either my timing is perpetually off when it comes to the mice or my luck is just plain lousy. 

Shortly after Caroline died (and was stored in the freezer beside Daphne until they could be taken to be cremated - a fact which my mom forgot until she went rummaging around in the back of the freezer for cheese and was startled (to say the least) by a frozen, Ziploc-ed mouse) Clover, my sweet little rabbit, took a downward turn. It started out with weight loss that had me concerned enough to make a vet appointment but became something closer to panic when he became lethargic one evening a week before his scheduled appointment. I took him into the vet the next morning on an emergency drop off appointment and he remained there on heat lamps throughout the day and went home with me in the evening in less than stable condition, with poor appetite and low body temperature. I was cuddling with him at home that evening when he stretched out and then went limp. Having held enough dying animals (that is a sad statement of my life, is it not?) to know what that meant I pleaded with him not to go but it was useless: he died in my arms. And so we lost Clover - the malnourished stray I had caught in a live trap and nursed back to health six years ago. Perhaps the only positive thing I can say about losing Clover was that at least he was not bonded to any other rabbits that would be left behind; I was in the process of bonding him with Jojo but they were only at the point of tolerating each other when Clover died. 

The benefit to having so many pets is that when you lose one you can't wallow in your misery for long: you have a dozen or so other animals that need you still. Which brings me back to Evangeline, our lone mouse. As it so happens, I was trolling the humane society website (as I often do, looking for some animal or another who seems to desperately need a home like ours) and happened across the profiles of three female mice who were up for adoption. Here was a perfect opportunity to add roommates for Evangeline while supporting a worthy cause. Needless to say Evangeline now has three new mice to socialize with: Angela, Francine, and Gemima.

And so the tally stands at this: departures - 3, arrivals - 4. But knowing life on the Unfarm, those numbers are sure to change again all too soon.

A healthy respect

It would seem that after Molly's misadventure with the chickens the other day (see previous post: Gretchen - warrior rooster) she has developed a healthy respect for the chickens. Actually it tips the scales closer to fear. Ask her now if she has to go out to go potty and she'll perk up, wagging her tail and heading toward the door to her territory (aka the master bedroom.) But if it is still light out, that's as far as she will go. She has made the connection that daylight means the chickens are out and could ambush her at any moment, and so long as they are out she has determined that she won't be. Put her outside and she cowers on the back deck, tail tucked between her legs. Even if the chickens are not actually visible, she is certain that they lurk somewhere nearby, ready to chase her the minute she starts to pee. As this is a relatively new situation I am not sure what exactly we are going to do to remedy it. In the short term we have been taking her out to the front yard to go to the bathroom but this is far from ideal as she has been known to take off into the neighbor's yard to chase their cat or run after people walking past the house. Maybe some kind of canine-galline desensitization therapy in which we place a chicken in the same room with Molly for longer and longer periods of time. Or is it that you add more and more chickens in the room? Something like that. Or maybe we need to increase her dosage of prozac. Or maybe some kind of dog therapist. To be honest, she probably needs more prozac and a therapist as a matter of course anyway. She is far from well adjusted. Probably the next big project we'll need to tackle here on the Unfarm.

Gretchen - warrior rooster

The routine for letting the dogs - or rather Scout - out in the backyard has become more complicated now that he is full grown and no longer an eight pound puppy who can be bossed around by the chickens. Before we can let Scout out we have to do a head count of the chickens and establish that they are, indeed, all out of the dog run. This is best accomplished by tossing a scoop full of squirrel food off the deck over by the blueberry bushes. The chickens are, by this point, used to the sound of the squirrel food bin opening and know to come running from whatever part of the yard they are in if they want an easy meal. Which they always do. If all five chickens start pecking the ground for bits of sunflower seeds and corn we know that we are in the clear and Scout is free to go out. If one or two chickens have flown into the dog run we have to entice them out with additional scoopfuls of squirrel food before we can let Scout roam freely. 

It happens, though, that on occasion one of us (cough "dad") fails to do a proper head count and just opens the back door and hopes for the best. Sometimes this works out and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, Scout's exit is quickly followed by a barrage of squawking and a great deal of flapping about as whichever chicken attempts to flee from a rather exuberant Scout intent on playing with them. We quickly intercede on behalf of our frazzled chicken and wrangle Scout, hopefully before any damage can be done. 

Axel and Molly do not require such maneuverings before being let out because Axel was raised on a farm with chickens and has learned to ignore them and Molly is about the same size as the chickens and is too fearful to try and take on any of them by herself. This does not mean that she will not join in with Scout if he is chasing a chicken: she will. Safety in numbers, I guess.

99% of the time when the dogs are in the dog run, the chickens know enough to stay out of it until the dogs return to the house. But there is that one percent. This happened a few days ago when Lucy decided to fly into the dog run while Scout and Molly were still in it. The chase was on. Molly and Scout started chasing, Lucy started running and squawking and then in came Gretchen. Bravely coming to the aid of his wife, he flew over the dog run fence and began chasing Molly. Molly, for her part, was completely taken aback by this startling turn of events and did what any sensible ten pound dog would do when being chased by a full sized rooster: she ran up onto the deck and hid between Axel's legs. While this was going on, Lucy seized the opportunity to fly back over the dog run fence and into the safety of the rest of the yard. Gretchen celebrated his victory by strutting back and forth a few times, crowing, and then flying back into the yard with Lucy. Who would have guessed that under all those fancy feathers lurked the heart of a warrior, ready to leap into action to defend his hens whenever the need should arise? I must admit that I have rather a little more respect for our little rooster-cum-warrior.

A wife and a mistress

Our most recent batch of chickens included, much to our dismay, a rooster. The last time we ended up with a rooster we had to re-home him when he started crowing. This time, instead of re-homing him as soon as we realized we had another rooster on our hands, we decided to wait. "Maybe he won't crow and we can keep him," we thought with unwarrented optimism. Several months into Gretchen's adolescence we began hearing the ragged beginnings of a "cockle-doodle-doo." We were able to fix that with a homemade no-crow collar which, while not silencing him completely, does take his crowing volume down several notches, enough to be tolerable for the neighbors. His affinity for the ladies is a problem not so easily fixed. 

While having a rooster around is supposed to be good for egg production, it does tend to annoy the ladies when he's feeling amorous. This is usually first thing in the morning, as soon as the chickens have been let out of the coop. Gretchen is always the first one out of the coop, followed in varying order by Bridget, Lucy, and Georgia. Penny is usually the last one out of the coop, choosing to slip out when she thinks the coast is clear. As soon as the ladies hop out, Gretchen starts looking for his victim, which is usually Bridget. After a short chase, Gretchen manages to pin Bridget down and a few seconds later Bridget runs off and Gretchen goes about his business of looking for something to eat.

For the rest of the day, however, Gretchen appears to faithfully spend his time with Lucy. If Lucy is foraging in the garden, Gretchen is usually found nearby looking for bugs with her and if Gretchen is on the back deck, raiding the squirrel food bin, Lucy is often sitting inside said bin, gorging herself on corn and sunflower seeds. 

Within our little flock, Bridget appears to be the mistress, the hen that Gretchen chooses most often to sleep with and Lucy appears to be the wife, the hen that Gretchen chooses most often to spend his time with. This arrangement seems to please Lucy just fine. Bridget seems decidedly less pleased with the situation. Unfortunately, there is no collar available to fix this problem. The ladies will just have to put up with it, or learn to run faster.

Sand cookie caper

Dogs and cats, I have decided, have extremely opposite opinions when it comes the the issue of the litter box. Cats view this as a place for making deposits, while dogs view this as a place for making withdrawals. "Sand cookies," if I have not explained previously, are what we call the "treats" that the dogs dig out of the litter box to snack on. The dogs know that they are not supposed to be digging through the litter boxes so they tend to do it when we aren't looking, and then run off with their sand cookies to devour them in some corner somewhere where they are less likely to be caught. "Leave the scene of the crime as fast as possible," seems to be their thought process. On the occasions when we do catch the dogs leaving the litter box area looking rather more guilty than usual we can yell "drop it" and they will, if they feel like it, listen once in a while and drop the sand cookie wherever they are standing.

On one occasion I happened to catch Scout sneaking out of the laundry room with a suspicious lump in his mouth. "Drop it....," I warned, and for once Scout obliged, spitting out the sand cookie on the floor in the hallway. I went to the bathroom to grab toilet paper to pick it up and dispose of it and by the time I came back Max had come out of the bedroom and was wandering down the hall. Coming upon the sand cookie Max seemed rather surprised to find it where he did not recall leaving it. He sniffed at it, and then proceeded, as any self respecting feline would, to scratch at the floor around it, trying in vain to cover it up. He obviously did not recall making a deposit in the hallway but tried to be responsible about it nonetheless. I found the sight of Max trying to clean up after Scout rather amusing. Max seemed mainly concerned that he may have gone to the bathroom outside of the litter box without recalling doing so. And Scout, for his part, failed to see any humor in the situation and seemed to focus only on the loss of his snack.

Another one bites the dust

The population of Scout's toy box is steadily declining. Stuffed animals, frisbees, and rope toys have all become endangered species around here. Apparently, the most entertaining part of a toy is not shaking it or chasing after it but actually pulling the stuffing out of it to reach the squeaker inside. Watching the toy box progressively get emptier I grew concerned that our puppy would become bored and move on to the destruction of less appropriate things like, say, the couch. Knowing that if that were to take place Scout himself would become the endangered species I came up with what I thought was a genius solution. I bought a package of tube socks and a bag of stuffing and stuffed each sock with the stuffing and a squeaker and then sewed the top closed. Voila! A bunch of new toys. This should last him a while. Right?

It took Scout all of an hour to figure out that these new toys were perfect for tug of war. As soon as he could convince Axel to play with him the two of them were squared off, each trying to rip the sock away from the other. More than winning the sock, the real appeal of this game appears to be the sound of the sock ripping open and the sight of the stuffing falling all over the living room floor. Now not only is the toy box population still decreasing, but we are cleaning the living room daily of fluff and squeakers and ripped up socks. I think that I am going to have to break down and buy new toys made of tougher stuff or risk finding pieces of the couch strewn about the living room.

Hang ten

Scout is a professional surfer. Counter surfer, that is. At this point he could win pro-surfing competitions with all the practice he's had. And Scout is not shy about his surfing. He will do it right in front of us if he thinks there is something worth going after on the counter. His regular raiding runs have netted him several prizes already including, but not limited to: an entire container of dog treats, a hot dog bun, cookies, bread, a variety of lids to a variety of containers, plastic bags containing or previously containing food, the top to a thermos for Mom's tea, plastic water bottles, dog toys, training treats, half a jar of peanut butter, an entire cube of butter including the wrapping, and his latest prize: a bottle of fish oil for the cat's food. Much to his disappointment I caught him red handed and confiscated the smelly item, but not before he chewed several holes in the bottle and spilled fish oil all over the living room carpet. This was, presumably, a tactic to ensure he would have some for later, like a squirrel storing nuts for the winter. He spent the next hour licking fish oil out of the carpet, even after Mighty Mouth - our industrial carpet cleaner - tackled the mess. What remains from Scout's counter surfing is the unpleasant aroma of fish permeating the house, and several large stains all over the carpet. 

This was obviously not Scout's first misadventure with counter surfing and I'm sure it won't be his last. Case in point: just a few days ago I found a chewed up bottle prescription bottle and several pills scattered on the living room carpet. This pill bottle was previously a resident of the kitchen counter and we have never made a practice of storing our medications scattered across the floor. Clearly Scout had been at work again, and this time it cost us $65 to call the animal poison control emergency line to make sure that Scout had not inadvertently poisoned himself with Molly's Prozac. (He had not, although he was rather more sleepy for the rest of the day than a ten month old puppy should be, which was actually a nice change for us all.) As much as we try to keep items that may be of value to Scout out of his reach, he has a habit of turning lemons into lemonade and finding a purpose for anything he encounters in the kitchen, whether it is edible or not. Non edible items make great chew toys, after all. It would not surprise me if there was a sequel to this story.

There's one in every hatch

Well, it's happened. Again. Our latest batch of chicks, like our last batch, came with an unexpected surprise: a rooster. Gretchen is, apparently, a Gregory. The last time this happened with our "hen" named Buttercup, we were forced to re-home him after he started crowing at a few months of age. With neighbors that complained about nearly everything (our trees, our bamboo, the dogs barking in the neighborhood, the kids playing next door, the fact that the sky is blue and not purple with green polka dots; you name it, they probably complained about it) we knew it would not be long before they came knocking to complain about our little songbird so we regretfully re-homed our rooster. 

This time around the situation is somewhat different. Sir and Misses Complains-a-lot have moved out, along with two other neighbors with the subsequent result that now the neighborhood is full of nine barking dogs, three noisy teenagers, two screaming kids, one shrieking parrot, and a partridge in a pear tree. So the addition of one rooster seems to hardly make a dent in the general noisiness of the neighborhood. Add to that the fact that Gretchen has yet to utter a single cockle-doodle-doo: not so much as a peep has escaped his tiny bird mouth. (Knock on wood.) Should Gretchen decide to start, we are going to try to a No Crow rooster collar (check them out here if you want: http://nocrowroostercollars.com/). At best it will reduce or eliminate the crowing. At worst it will be a fashion accessory to make him look charming while he does crow. As long as Gretchen maintains his vow of silence it looks like we will be keeping our rooster and starting a new adventure here on the Unfarm as rooster owners. He does seem to round out our flock of four hens nicely. Keeping our fingers crossed.

Super Dog!

... Or, How I Came to Walk Scout Before I Walk Molly and Axel. But "super dog" has a better ring to it, don't you think? Dog walks. It sounds like a simple enough activity: attach leashes to dogs on one end, your hand on the other, and proceed to put one foot in front of the other. But add in one slightly grumpy 90-pound dog, one extremely exuberant 50-pound puppy, and one overly neurotic ten pound dog all pulling in opposite directions and/or barking like a crazy thing (Molly) and the task becomes decidedly less simple. The solution was obvious: I needed to walk in shifts, taking one or two dogs and then the remaining dog(s). The first day I attempted this was a utter fail. 

I decided that I would talk Molly and Axel together so that I could ensure that Molly's bad habits would not rub off on our impressionable young pup; Axel being rather set in his ways and not so easily influenced. Scout would walk by himself because he tends to be calmer on his own, and he was in obedience class at the time and could benefit from the extra training time. So off I set one summer evening, Axel and Molly in tow. Scout was less than pleased. He was convinced that I was leaving without him and he would not get a walk this day. As I rounded the corner of the house, Scout ran to the master bedroom, jumped up on the bed, and pounded on the window. Which was, unfortunately, open. I stood outside, shouting for Mom and trying to force my frozen muscles to move my body back into the house. While I stood there watching, Scout pushed the screen out of the window and almost fell out. My heart skipped a beat, but he recovered and managed not to fall out. You can imagine my relief. Followed by my utter dismay when Scout took a look out the (second story) window, figured, "I can make that," and proceeded to JUMP OUT THE WINDOW. He went flying, like some sort of super dog, out the window. My heart stopped. I had visions of Buddy jumping off the garden retaining wall and injuring his wrist and how that was the beginning of the end for him. I was sure that jumping out of the window would have some kind of dire consequences for Scout. He landed behind the trailer and I stood without breathing for half a second, waiting for the worst to happen. What actually happened was that Scout ran out in front of the trailer and came bounding up to me, as if to say, "Well? What are we waiting for? Let's go!" My relief was immeasurable.

That he was uninjured was a miracle. That he was unfazed was somewhat disturbing. What, after all, was to stop him from jumping out the window again? This then, is how I came to walk Scout before I walk Molly and Axel, in hopes of draining off some of his energy before he sees me walk off without him. This is also, incidentally, how I came to be even more anxiety ridden than I already was, which is saying a lot. Prior to all walks now we shut every window, every door, lock all doors to the outside, and insist that anyone coming or going does so through the garage, which means there are two doors for the dogs to get through before they can gain any access to the outdoors. These precautions afford me a small measure of comfort but as I am about as neurotic as Molly, it doesn't afford much.