Farm News 01-29-06

Sunday morning, after chores


Drusilla Lays an Egg

All three of the Golden Sebright bantam hens are named Drusilla. They don't mind all having the same name; it makes their gossiping amusing. They will all sit on a high perch, talking about the other poultry, interrupting each other so that no sentence is ever finished. “Did you see – Drusilla, her behavior was – Yes, Drusilla, I – Not that goose, Drusilla, she's too -- .”

The bantams consider themselves members of the upper class, far above the other poultry. For one thing, they have the highest roost, the one above the barn door, and they thus have the opportunity to crap on everyone else. They don't do it out of nastiness, like Ting, but out of disdain. They don't think other creatures are of a high enough order to dislike being crapped upon.

All three Drusillas seem to be laying eggs. Unless I spend a lot of time watching them I can't know. They share nests this early in the season, so there might be five nests with eggs in them and the eggs will be an assortment laid by all three Drusillas.

Drusilla likes to read while sitting on her nest, waiting for her daily egg to appear. She is not, though, constructed in such a manner that she can hold a book, so she expects me to sit in the barn and read to her while she is on the nest. After I had read several Harry Potter books to her she actually met Harry, who was disguised as a mouse at that time, so now Drusilla has become quite interested in magic. This spring she asked me to read Johnathon Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. It is a 780 page book, so we might be at it for a while.

The reader will, I pray, understand that, although I refer to Drusilla in the singular, there are indeed three chickens with that name. Although there are three, they are, to most people, indistinguishable, although they will assert that they are distinguished if not distinguishable. The use of the singular is much easier for the author, the reader, and Drusilla, who cannot count to three without making several errors.

Drusilla isn't very smart; in fact, she's just a dumb chicken, not much smarter than Ting. The book is interesting, so I'm reading some of it to myself in the evening, with the result that Drusilla gets short pieces with long parts skipped. Drusilla doesn't care or even notice, and I am going through the book quickly.


Ting's New Trick

In any discussion of dumb chickens Ting is bound to appear. As I have mentioned many times, Ting lives to attack my ankles. This week she came up with a new trick. There is a door between the front and back parts of the barn. Ting has started hiding behind the door so that she can attack me as I come through. The door, though, swings to the side that Ting is hiding behind, so that it whacks her in the head and, sometimes, tumbles her over. Such treatment infuriates Ting, so that she is now spending a great part of her day hiding there, ready to attack. Each time I open the door Ting takes a knock on the head, increasing her fury. Dumb chicken.


Pruning Time

Few things prune time from your day like pruning trees. I keep trying to cast myself in the role of wise old orchard keeper, patiently caring for his trees, but, for me, orchard keeper is a very attractive role to view and a hard one to play. January and February are the best months for pruning fruit trees, generally, and deciding what to cut is usually fairly easy.

Most fruit trees are prone to growing what are called 'water sprouts' or 'bull whips'. These are long, rapidly growing vertical shoots that generally grow off a much larger branch. They all need to be cut off a quarter inch or so above the connection to the branch. Do that and half your pruning is finished. If you find any branches rubbing against each other or close to it, cut them out. There, pruning is finished.

It sounds easy but it takes a while. For the terminally lazy it is a major hassle.


How Do You Pronounce “@#$%^&*!”?


The phrase spelled, “@#$%^&*!”, has many different pronunciations, all of which I would like to use. Tuesday afternoon, while eating a late lunch, I heard a loud CRAAACK as I bit down on a sandwich. It was good old #5, the bicuspid molar on the top right side adjacent to the eye tooth. Last month an endodontist did a root canal on #5. See Rooting in the Canal, Farm News 12-25-05.

The loud noise occurred when one of the roots broke. Left dangling by one root, the molar wobbled around in its socket and started hurting. So I called the dentist I normally see. He was on vacation until the first of February. Then I called the endodontist who had done the root canal and was able to schedule an appointment for Wednesday evening.

The endodontist peered into my mouth and poked around for a while until he found just the spot to press that sent fire shooting through my head. Holding his finger there, firmly, he explained that the root was broken and that it would require surgery, probably, to remove the broken piece. He doesn't do surgery, only root canals, and I needed to see an oral surgeon.

Thursday morning I called the oral surgeon, only to be told that he was on vacation until the first of February. Using the Yellow Pages, a great way to find dentists, I found another oral surgeon and called. A nice young woman answered, listened to my plight, and asked me if the first of February would be okay.

@#$%^&*! By this time it was very clear to me that there was a broad conspiracy among dentists to keep me in pain until the first of February. Using my most pitiful voice, I begged, pleaded, wept into the phone, and generally made myself obnoxious, until the young lady said I could come in at 11:00 that day. Hah! The conspiracy was broken.

Finally, I was in a dentist's chair, knowing it was going to be a long and unpleasant experience, waiting for the great man to come in and remove my broken tooth. He arrived, looked into my mouth, made a few cheerful comments, picked up a pair of pliers, and plucked out the tooth and its broken root with one deft twist of the wrist. No pain, no anguish, no screaming patients, just a five minute procedure.

@#$%^&*! I thought this would make a great story, and he ruined the whole thing. Well, I am not going to allow some jolly dentist with his big smile and skilful dexterity with pliers ruin an opportunity for a story, so I reflected on the experience for a while. Then it came to me: FORMS. When I went in that office I was in pain, tired, and irritable, so the first thing they did was give me a big stack of forms to fill out. A stack of paper like that could feed a billy goat for a week.

The plethora of forms in health care facilities is not due to excessive government regulation, it's due to the archaic management methods in place in most health care facilities. Docs generally think if they are smart enough to be docs then they are smart enough to manage the practice. That belief proves they aren't as smart as they think they are.

Every one of those forms had a place for me to print my name and enter the date. One form even asked for me to print my name three times. Those forms will then be transcribed by a clerk, with an opportunity for a typing error on every field. A kiosk computer could be used for patients to enter their data, and it should know the date itself, removing dozens of chances for errors. Then, if paper forms are needed, they can be printed out with all the identifier information already in place.

The dentist wanted to know what medications I was taking. I wasn't about to print out all that from memory. But the dentist's system couldn't ask the physician's system for the data. No, it required a telephone call from a clerk in the dentist's office to a clerk in the physician's office. The physician's clerk then had to search for the paper records, pull out the medications list, take to a fax machine, and fax it across the street to the dentist's office. All that nonsense probably required at least $20 worth of human resources, $20 that went on everyone's health care costs.

The President has decreed that docs must all go to digital med records. He failed to tell the Institute of Medicine to get its act together and to create a set of data definitions that all digital medical record systems will use. So, a whole lot of old mainframe people are now in the medical records system business, each company producing proprietary systems that can't interact with other systems. Archaic proprietary record keeping can kill modern health care just by pushing costs over the top.

Farm News 01-22-06

Sunday morning, after chores


SEX! (almost)

Tuesday morning, after the geese were fed and given fresh water, Bebe goose climbed into the sex tub. Humans have bath tubs which, at least by Southern Baptists, are not considered appropriate sites for sex, and geese have sex tubs. Domestic geese generally aren't very enthusiastic about swimming but they definitely prefer to mate in water. Here, their favorite erotic environment is a plastic tub about three feet long, two feet wide, and six inches deep. This year, I put their sex tub out on New Year's Day, thinking that they might enjoy the opportunity for an occasional cold weather quickie, but Tuesday morning was the first time I've seen them try to use it.

Bebe's mate is Butch, a very handsome gander but one with an attitude. When Bebe climbed into the tub Butch yelled the goose equivalent of “Whoopee” and jumped on top of her. Bebe seemed to think that she deserved flowers first. I suspect Butch of carrying a flask of peppermint schnapps under his wing and occasionally getting a bit loaded, so I watched to see if he knew the old adage, “Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.” Either he didn't know that, didn't care, or was out of schnapps, because no bottle appeared. Instead he grabbed her by the back of the neck and started yanking her head back.

Bebe didn't care for this treatment and started yelling and raising hell. Sarge and Beth, the other two geese, who, like me, were standing there watching, immediately joined in the uproar, honking and screeching. Guy Noir, who was nearby, began gobbling and then Trusty started barking. 'Fro and Claudius, the roosters, both joined in with crows and snarls and the new black doe rabbit began singing an aria from Tristan und Isolde.

It's beginning. The shortest day has passed and now it is time to start thinking about spring and babies. The goats are already pregnant, they took care of that last month, but now the poultry mating season begins.

The fun starts with the male birds. Fresh hot running testosterone makes male birds think they are the toughest guys in the bar. It's amazing to me how males react to other species. The male turkeys, male ducks, male chickens, and male geese all fight or chase each other around but ignore the females. Watching all this makes me wonder if testosterone isn't an anti-civilization hormone. Estrogen driven national leaders are becoming more popular; maybe they will help save the world.

Why would a gander, a tom, a rooster, and a drake consider each other adversaries? Neither they nor the females show any signs of desiring to engage in miscegenation, so it isn't a battle for sex partners, unless they do this to impress their own females with their ability to protect and defend. It's too bad male birds aren't shaped in such a way that we could fit them with holsters and toy guns, I think they'd love them. I can easily imagine this bunch running around in the barnyard shouting, “Pow! You're dead!”


Education

The Kansas Constitution orders the legislature to provide for an appropriate education for all students. As most of the world knows, this state is locked in an on-going argument about whether Intelligent Design should be one of the things taught when providing an appropriate education. However, there is another issue that is possibly even more important. The question is, how much money must the legislature provide, and how is that money to be allocated to districts, in order to fund an appropriate education for each student.

The funding issue ended up before the Kansas Supreme Court, which ordered that the legislature spend more money on education. The immediate response from the flock of self-righteous was that the court was usurping the powers of the legislature. 'Activist judges', right here in Kansas! The conservatives in the legislature are outraged that the Supreme Court decided it has the authority to interpret the constitution.

One big argument is whether very small schools, which lack the economies of scale, should be given more money per student or forced to consolidate with other schools until they gain economy of scale. When you have a bunch of narrow-minded jackasses arguing over money it is almost impossible for them to see the true issues. The Supreme Court says that the small schools receive more money than they need and large schools need more money because they are dealing with more students from poverty backgrounds.

I am not certain that the poverty rate is higher in the cities than it is in the countryside. There is no shortage of low income families in this area. I am certain, though, that one of the reasons that it costs more to educate children from poverty backgrounds in large schools is because the schools are too damned big.

Walt, a neighbor who lives just down the road, had polio when he was six. His left arm is shriveled and useless, dangling from his shoulder. When in high school, Walt lettered two years in a row in football and even played basketball one season. They would tape his left arm to his chest to keep it out of his way and Walt would go out there and give it hell. He admits, though, that he was a terrible basketball player.

Walt went to a small school. They were happy to have a kid who would give it everything he had, even if he only had one arm, because there were barely enough kids to make up a team. Would Walt have been able to play in a school with 2,000 students? Would anyone have noticed him and seen that he was going to succeed regardless of what happened?

The idea of an 'economy of scale' with large schools is pure baloney. There might be an economy of scale in warehousing children, but if the goal is to educate them, every single one of them, then large schools are incredibly inefficient.

Barker and Gump wrote a book titled Big School, Small School in which they presented the results of their research into the differences between big and small schools. They noticed that small schools have as many football teams as big schools, and as many school newspapers and yearbooks. In a small school, though, there are barely enough students and teachers to keep everything running. Every person in a small school becomes valuable, even if they are dumb as a post or missing some limbs, because without them there might not be enough people to get the job done. Sadly, I have never met an educator who has read Big School, Small School.


Many times, I have sat in seminars sponsored by the Kansas Association of School Boards and the National Association of School Boards, and asked, “Where are the numbers that show an economy of scale in school size?” The answer has always been something to the effect, “Well, everybody knows that.” I am convinced that if you look at the full range of services that schools provide, especially education, instead of excluding everything except building costs, you will find that small schools are more efficient.


There are limits, of course. A three student school will have difficulty being efficient. The ideal size for K-8, at least, seems to be 200-250 students. In a school with 250 students it will be quite possible for every adult in the school to know the name of every child in the school, a situation which can greatly enhance student discipline and performance.

At the high school level the primary problem with small schools is that it is harder to put together a winning football team. Football is generally the most important product of a high school. When a school needs a new football coach the search starts, not for a teacher who can coach football, but for a football coach who can at least pretend to teach something. For ten years I tried to change teacher hiring procedures so that teaching position candidates would not be asked if they could coach something until after the hiring decision had been made. There wasn't a chance. Football trumps education every time.

Anyway, what it all cooks down to is this: I'll bet that dealing with the special problems presented by students who are living in poverty can be done more efficiently in small schools than in big schools, and by small school I mean a building with fewer than 300 students. Dividing up a warehouse into 'schools within a school' won't cut it. The object is to reach a point where every adult in the building knows the name of every child in the building. When that state is reached problems become more manageable and children stop falling through the cracks in the bureaucracy.


Book Reviews

Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin. I can only think of one or two people I know who might enjoy this book, but those few would enjoy it a lot, I think. It was written ten or twelve years ago, so it isn't as up to date with her thinking as Animals in Translation.

Since having West Nile virus I occasionally have patches of windmilling black and white bars appear in my visual field. They seldom amount to much, but occasionally they make it difficult to read. Grandin's book led me to see the similarity of my visual disturbances to the visual problems of a severely autistic young man I once knew.

Although the book is ostensibly about autism it shines a light into the darker corners of the effects of sensory and cognitive disorders and to the relationships between those disorders and animal behavior.


Harvest by Tess Gerritsen. This is a medical thriller about heart transplants. I thought the TV show ER was about doctors behaving badly, but the ones on TV are nothing compared to Gerritsen's docs. Killing children to obtain healthy hearts is a bit much. If you have need open heart surgery this book will convince you to take a gun with you into the OR.

Farm News 01-15-06

Sunday morning, after chores, 47°
Kansas has at least two beautiful days each month,
Today is one of them for January


Storing Canna Bulbs

Canna Lilies, Canna x. generalis, are generally USDA zone 9 plants, which means that they can stay in the ground year round only down in hurricane country; they don't like it colder than 20°F. Here in Kansas you have to dig the tubers in the fall, store them for the winter, and then replant them in the spring. That's a bit of a nuisance but Cannas are beautiful plants and they attract hummingbirds.

Three years ago I bought about a dozen Canna bulbs at an auction. Several were in bad shape, but I managed to raise six or seven plants. They were in good soil and from those I gathered half a feed sacks full of bulbs. The bulbs all spent the winter in a neighbor's basement and the next fall I had three feed sacks full of bulbs, which also spent the winter in the neighbor's basement. This fall I had about seven sacks, I suppose. They have grown beyond feed sack storage.

Instead of the neighbor's basement they have been spending this winter in the barn. Like the canary in the coal mine, they will tell me how well I do this winter at keeping the barn reasonably warm. So far, about a third of them have succumbed to the cold. They are stacked in a group of cardboard boxes about five feet away from the wood stove. The ones in the boxes on top of the stack have frozen and died but those lower down still look fine.

I knew when I started that some would die. It's like those big round bales of hay: you lose some on the top and the bottom, but, hopefully, not so much that it doesn't offset the savings in handling costs. In the case of the Canna bulbs, I expect to lose some on the top and sides but those on the bottom will survive.

For the past ten years the floor of the barn has not frozen except for a strip three to five feet wide along the north side. Generally, if the temperature is predicted to fall below freezing, there is a fire in the wood stove. Wood stoves are reliable only if there is someone there who will wake up if it gets too cold and tend the stove. Being happily married, I sleep in the house and seldom wake up because it is cold in the barn.

On ferociously cold nights, though, if there are baby animals in the barn, I'll drink a big glass of water before going to bed. Thus fortified with the 'Indian alarm clock', I can count on waking by 3:00 am, at which time I bravely dress and trudge to the barn, through the blowing snow, to feed the stove and help keep the babies warm. The cold air makes me feel warm and fuzzy about myself.

Do Canna bulbs qualify as 'baby animals'? No way. It is impossible to become sufficiently concerned about Canna bulbs that one would put on three to five layers of clothing and walk fifty yards through blowing snow to keep them from freezing. So, it doesn't bother me much to lose the outer layers of bulbs as long as I have several dozen left by spring.

After I put the bulbs in the boxes I filled in any remaining space with shredded paper to help insulate them. Unlike animals, bulbs don't have their own body heat, so insulation alone won't do the job. Mainly, it slows down the temperature changes inside the box as the outside temperature goes up and down. I'm guessing that it would take several days of cold weather to freeze the contents of the box even if I didn't have a fire in the stove. With the stove going the damage to the bulbs is limited.

Canna 'bulbs', by the way, are not bulbs at all but are rhizomes, for those who like to be correct about such things. They look something like Iris rhizomes. If I'm lucky, there should be Canna bulbs to plant out in the spring. Cannas will grow almost anywhere but they seem to like moisture. A neighbor plants them in pots and then sets the pots in 2”-4” deep water at the edge of his fish pond. I hope to plant some at the edge of the pond at the east end of the dam.

Will lots of Canna flowers make the hummingbirds happy? I doubt it, hummingbirds are tiny, beautiful, elegant, and have the dispositions of trolls.


Rabbits

Saturday morning four buck rabbits went to the sale. A week ago I purchased seven rabbits, five of which turned out to be bucks. The survivor of this reality show is a pleasant charcoal gray fellow. Both of the does are pregnant, probably, if they are both does. One, a solid black, is definitely pregnant and should have bunnies this month. The other, a tri-color, might not even be a doe. It kicks a lot and objects to being checked for sex. When I put it in with the buck nothing happened, meaning that it's pregnant, or a buck, or the charcoal buck is gay.


Ting

This morning I was taking the feed to the ducks. Ting, an ill-tempered and dishonest chicken who lives with the ducks, flew from her roosting place and landed on my arm. She then crapped on me and flew on down to eat her breakfast. Lovely bird.


Huh?

This week I received two booklets in the mail, the first from CareMark, who now handles the prescription drug benefits for retired bureaucrats, and the other from Delta Dental, who, obviously, provide dental insurance for the same group. I was an inept bureaucrat but I think that I am a very skillful retiree, so I carefully read a few paragraphs from each booklet. These two companies have no relationship that I know of except that Kansas is one of their clients, yet both booklets contained a fascinating typographical characteristic.

In both books the words 'you' and 'your' were printed as 'You' and 'Your', even in the middle of a sentence. The word 'I' is always capitalized, but not, generally, the words 'You' and 'Your'. The person, or committee, responsible for writing the text in which this usage appears obviously knew enough about current English usage to realize that this was not proper. The usage was obviously intentional. Why?

Good readers, I have thought about this for several days and have come to no conclusion. Why, indeed, would those two words be capitalized. I have considered the possibility of a sneaky software glitch, but two things argue against that: (1) someone would have proofed it, and (2) it occurred in the booklets of two otherwise seemingly unrelated companies. Do you have any thoughts about this mystery? If so, please write to FarmNews@Geezernet.com.

This isn't a contest; I just can't figure this out and thought that maybe, with the help of a few more minds, we all might be able to understand why a person, or committee, decided that 'You' and 'Your' should be capitalized. One or more smart people (possibly including even a Wellesley or Smith woman) decided that in a booklet about health care related insurance it would be a good idea to capitalize those words. Huh?

Farm News 01-08-06

Sunday morning, after chores, 40°, feels like April

Guy Noir Gets Nasty

Male turkeys are not always pleasant companions. Guy Noir, the current tom turkey, is starting to act out his primal urges in socially unacceptable ways. When he limited himself to chasing Trusty it was humorous. Now he tries to dominate humans as well. Guy might think that I need a good hard peck on the leg, but he has misunderstood the pecking order if he thinks he can get by with it more than a few times.

Replacing a breeding age tom turkey is not easy. Most of the turkeys who weren't needed for breeding are in freezers. The huge Broad Breasted Whites are produced by artificial insemination, Googling 'turkey artificial insemination' produced 82,000 hits, but poking pipettes up a turkey's butt doesn't sound like a fun day in the country.

Hoping to save women and children from Guy's attacks, I decided to move the turkeys into the pasture, so I shooed them all into the pasture, after a prolonged hassle at the gate where the goats were interested in coming out and the geese were intent on keeping visitors away. Guy wanted back out and spent the day pacing back and forth at the gate searching for an escape route.

That evening he flew up on the shed roof to spend the night guarding the farm. The next morning he flew back into the pasture, where he spent the day pacing back and forth at the gate searching for an escape route. The gate, by the way is 40” high, and Guy could easily fly over it, but it never occurs to him to go over the top. He will launch his big butt up to the top of the shed to spend the night, but he won't fly over a low gate. Interesting bird.

Architecture Onward

The Exotic Victorian, A.I.A., Ph.D., sent a comment on the seemingly endless row of urinals in the New Orleans Convention Center.

It sounds like bad planning to me. I think maybe I'd try to put them in a
more harmonious configuration, like a big circle.
No 'partitions.' They used
to circle the wagons when folks got nervous about losing their scalps.
Circle
the wieners, so they won't worry about scrota.
The Exotic Victorian

A Reader Writes

Darling Handsome Geezer,
Congratulations on reaching 69. What a great age to
be, for obvious, unmentionable, reasons. I do love hearing the stories about "69" (the year and the position). As a 10 year history teacher, I have recounted many a story to my high school history classes of the turbulent years 1968-69. Many of those stories were based on the observations of a generation of people
related to me. I change the names, of course, to protect the guilty. I'm sure there are many more I haven't heard, please write more.
Martina Starlight

A Story from 1969
Every good cowboy should have a chance to walk down the street in front of dozens of guns, all pointed at him, smiling and sauntering along as if undisturbed. When the guns are all being pointed by cops, and the cowboy has a gram or two of hash in his pocket, the situation is loaded up with more cojones than the Turkey Testicle Festival. All up and down the street whores were at their windows, deeply inhaling the waves of pheromone laden masculine scents.

The cowboy on this day in 1969 was Joe Grogan, the younger brother of Emmett Grogan, both of them identities used by many people. Young Joe was walking down a street in Kansas City, aiming on smoking some of that hashish with Pete, the Commandant of the Black Panther Party in KC. Pete had called Joe on the phone and said, “Come on down to headquarters and bring something to smoke. You gotta see this. Park several blocks away and walk in.”

Joe hopped on a motorcycle and rode to a place several blocks from Panther headquarters, parked the bike, and started walking. The headquarters was located in a storefront in the middle of the block on the east side. As he turned onto that block he saw the sun gleaming off the windows on the front of the office. One the west side, parked bumper to bumper for the entire block, were police cars. Hundreds of cops were looking over the tops of the police cars with their rifles and shotguns, all aimed at Panther headquarters.

At that moment Joe realized that Pete had called him so that he could share a truly wonderful moment in history. In the front window of the Panther headquarters two big black guys were brandishing shotguns: a 12 gauge and a .410, dangerous but lethal only at close range. Across the street, hiding behind their cars with all kinds of artillery were the hundreds of cops, maybe fifty of them, actually, all focused on those two Panthers in the storefront with an intensity that is matched only by the best of Hollywood productions.

“Yes!” Joe thought, “I'll mix my testosterone into this stew, it should be some fun.” Hitching up his pants, he stepped into the middle of the street, which was now blocked at each end with police barricades, and, hashish at the ready in his pocket, sauntered down the center of the street to Panther headquarters. Police radios were squawking, people were talking, and cars were passing through the intersections at each end of the block, but Joe heard the total silence of the town as he strolled down the center of the street. In front of the Panther headquarters he stopped, turned to the cops, tipped his hat to the hundreds of assault rifles now aimed at him, then turned away and walked into the Panther office.

As he entered the office the two guys with shotguns glared at him for a moment, looking threatening, and then one growled and the other grunted and they went back to posturing for the cops. Pete opened the door to his office and Joe went in to find a couple of other Panther leaders and a local clergyman. They thought that the nonsense out front had gone on long enough, but they didn't want to appear to be backing down, so it would have to continue a for a while. Joe suggested they smoke some hash while waiting, there being nothing better to do.

Joe, the preacher, and the two Black Panthers sat there for a half hour or so, smoking hash, except for the preacher, who said he was on duty, and trying to mellow out, intensely aware of what was going on just beyond the office walls. It was pretty good hash and it accomplished its task nicely, when Pete stepped out of the office in a cloud of smoke we were all ready to relax. Pete returned with the guy that growled, who growled again at everybody, sat down, and reached for the pipe. A few minutes later Pete called in the other warrior, who came in, grunted, sat down, and reached for the pipe.

Twenty minutes later the hash was gone and the cops were getting bored. Grunt and Growl slipped out another door, taking their shotguns with them. Joe, somewhat puzzled over what his role in this drama was intended to be, thanked his hosts for their hospitality, and stepped into the street. Finally, the cops had someone to aim at, again. Joe reflected on the kindness of his hosts, who, by smoking all the hash, had saved him from any contraband substance problems with the cops.

Hitching up his pants, he again walked down the center of the street to the corner, and then went on to his motorcycle. It started on the first kick, and, using his turn signals, he pulled out into the street. As he closed his hand on the clutch lever to shift out of first gear, three police sirens went off simultaneously behind him and Joe decided that it would have been nice if his hosts had given him something for diarrhea control.

According to Joe, chest thumping is one of the lowest forms of testosterone posturing, but some men seem to know no other posturing routine. These cops appeared to be of that sort, Joe was tired, and chest thumping is usually amusing to watch. He submitted to an illegal search, ignored the comments about noxious odors, congratulated himself on the foresight of leaving the pipe behind, and watched the chest thumping display. These guys were tired, too, so it didn't last very long and, finally, everyone went home, certain that they had just saved humanity from disaster.

Rabbits!

Saturday I purchased seven rabbits, sex unknown. When I got them home I found I had two does, one pregnant, and five bucks. Next Saturday at least three of the bucks will go back to the sale and I'll try to buy one more doe. The new rabbits are all lops, they have floppy ears, and, like most lops, are very gentle and easy to handle.

Farm News 01-01-06

New Year's morning, after chores, 43°

Happy New Year
The best thing about this holiday is that it signals the end of the holiday season. I managed to succeed in my New Year's resolution for 2005. For the first time in several years I went through the entire year without being subjected to hearing Little Drummer Boy. My son and and I have made the resolution every year for at least a decade, that we shall strive to make it through the coming year without hearing that horrid piece of music.

Bump Boards the Ferry
A group of turkey fanciers have created Misfit Island, the place where pets go when they die. Bump the rabbit boarded the ferry to Misfit Island last week. He had a wild time this summer and fall, and seemed to be doing well this winter. He probably ate something that poisoned him, because he looked good and had no injuries. His body was resting in one of his favorite hangouts, a spot sheltered from the rain but which catches the afternoon winter sun.

Bump was laid to rest in the fork of a tree. I considered burying him, but decided that it would be more in harmony with his freedom for him to feed the crows and jays. Bump will remain free, flying with the wild birds.

Blanche and the Blue Sisters
Turkeys can be a nuisance. Blanche and the Blue Sisters, the female turkeys, have decided that roosting in the rafters of the barn is a good idea. The amount of crap that a turkey can deposit overnight makes me think it is a terrible idea. They were doing fine on the roosts I built for them in the goat shed attached to the barn. So begins the process of teaching those turkeys where to sleep.

Broad Breasted Whites, the breed raised by the millions, might be stupid. Heritage turkeys are anything but stupid but it sure can be hard to communicate with them. Once communication is established, there remains the problem of convincing them that following any suggestions that might have been communicated is in their interest. Is stubbornness really an animal trait? If so, then heritage turkeys have it.

If I time it perfectly, and all the poultry cooperate, I can shut the barn door before the turkeys roost for the night. Before I shut the door the young ducks and their mother must be inside, along with Ting and the bantam chickens. Claudius and the Drusillas, the bantams, are easy because they tend to go to their roost above the door by about 4:00 pm at this time of the year. Ting is usually following me around trying to peck me so it is no problem to trap her in the barn. The young ducks and their mother, though, are a bit more problematic.

The young ducks could stay in the goat shed for the rest of the winter without any problem. Most of their adult feathers are in and they like to swim in ice water, so I think they are tough enough. Their mother, though, is laying eggs again and I prefer that she lay them in the barn. At this time of the year duck eggs are delicious.

They probably have fairly high cholesterol content but I figure that just going out to feed and water the ducks twice a day is enough exercise to make up for occasionally eating one. They have big yolks, rich with a flavor similar to chicken eggs but more complex and delicate and with a gentle finish. A soft-boiled duck egg dropped on a slice of home-made multi-grain bread covered with home-made butter is a great way to start a day. Oh, it needs a glorious sunrise, too.

Preferably, a sunrise that occurs without turkeys roosting in the barn rafters. This week they managed to sneak in four out of seven nights, a statistic which can too easily be used to challenge my intelligence.
I want those turkeys to stay in the goat shed and to lay their eggs there. And, I would like for Guy, their great lover-boy, to stay with them.

Watching Guy chase Trusty the dog is amusing for a while but becomes tiresome after a while. Even worse, Guy is beginning to attack strange humans, which, for Guy, means everyone but me. His pecks can be painful and his attempts to plant his spurs are both painful and frightening.

A turkey fancier found an effective tom turkey training tool: the common leaf rake, the kind with lots of long, springy tines. When you lightly whap a tom turkey on the butt with a leaf rake the rattling of the tines seems to make some sort of impression. I've never had any real reason to whap a hen, they are fairly easy to get along with. Guy is now at the age where he is feeling his hormones and can't figure out what he's supposed to do about it.

What that boy needs is something to hump. Male turkeys like to climb up on a low mound and do a foot pounding routine; a turkey corollary to an activity more commonly associated with adolescent males of our own species. I hope he can find a friendly mound to enjoy out in the pasture. If so, will Blanche and the Blue Sisters stay out there with him? Probably. Turkey hens seem to be amused by the antics of the toms.

Writing is Dangerous
Last week I made some mildly derogatory comment about architects. The main reason I made the remark is that I wanted to poke some fun at my daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, and brother, all architects. This is a response I received, only slightly edited to change meaning:

That was all very interesting but I must take exceptionto the references to ‘architecture covering the design of [bad] professional offices.’ It isn’t that architects don’t design professional offices most of the time those offices are “not designed” by CONTRACTORS or interior designers.
The Exotic Victorian, Ph.D., A.I.A.

I know who wrote this, and changed her name to protect her guilt. I spent ten difficult years serving on the local school board. I will consider architecture a decent profession only after they purge themselves of all practitioners who would put a flat roof over the school library in Kansas.
At one point while I was serving on the school board the library roof was leaking over every school library in the county. It was at that point that I began to suspect that architecture might be a profession tainted with evil.

Then, after we completed a multi-million dollar addition to the school, we learned that two of the classrooms had such severe ventilation problems that they were unusable. I ask you, am I not justified in being suspicious of architects?

Speaking of architecture, I once attended a convention in the New Orleans Convention Center. When I first stepped into the men's room there I stopped, startled, staring down a room perhaps 50 yards long lined with men's urinals, and realized I was seeing more urinals than are to be found in total in Jefferson County. Whether or not that has anything to do with distrusting architects I'll let the reader decide.