Farm News 02-19-06

Sunday morning, after chores, 12°

Trusty Proves His Worth: Bites Coyote on Butt

Monday morning the dogs started raising a ruckus so I went out the door to see what was bothering them. There went a coyote, trotting along easy and relaxed, right through the yard, cutting across a corner of the deck. It was easily the biggest coyote I have ever seen, the size of a large German Shepherd.

Trusty was very upset with this animal but more than a little cautious about tangling with him. Finally, seeing his chance, he darted out and nipped the coyote on the butt. The coyote turned and snarled but Trusty jumped back out of reach. The coyote went on his way, cutting down through the woods toward the pond.

Coyotes (Canis latrans) are interesting creatures who have lived here a lot longer than I have, so I tend to respect their right to be here. I draw the line, though, at their cruising through the yard looking for poultry. People complain about coyotes taking their stock but a lot of folks train the coyotes to eat domestic animals. If you toss dead stock out in the woods for the coyotes to eat, the coyotes start regarding domestic stock as prey. Pretty soon they won't wait for the domestic stock to die of other causes.

Once a coyote becomes bold enough to walk through a yard in broad daylight with two dogs barking at him it is time to retire that coyote from active hunting. This coyote was way too accustomed to being around humans to be an acceptable resident in the neighborhood. Having decided that, though, the next question regards the method of removing him from the neighborhood.

A bullet is usually the first idea. That carries the problem of how to deliver the bullet to the coyote. I don't carry a handgun and couldn't hit a barn at twenty feet with one anyway. Carrying a rifle is unwieldy at best and, though I own one, it is not within easy reach, nor am I a good shot anymore.

A trap might work, but setting a trap that will catch a coyote before being tripped by a cat or dog is a difficult trick. I would prefer a box trap to a leg trap, although leg traps are not at all as inhumane as most people think. It would be difficult, though, to set a trap that wouldn't catch Trusty first.

Most animals tend to use the same paths over and over, and coyotes are no different. Coyotes, coons, and possums will all use the same path through the woods. Traps, to be useful, need to be set along one of those paths. I am not a good shot anymore, perhaps, but I am a much better tracker, so the paths in the woods are fairly plain to me. Still, the problem remains of filtering out the possums, coons, and Trusty before they reach the trap.

Bunny Power

Baby bunnies make excellent guard animals for visits to health care facilities. Last week I wrote about taking the bunnies to the cardiologist's office. I also decided to become a professional author and put a Google Ad-Sense block on the blog. The next time I looked at the blog it had two ads for cardiologists. Amazing.

I didn't take a bunny with me when I last visited the dentist. Unprotected, I lost a tooth but learned a lesson. Always take bunny with you when you seek health care.

Dr. M. on Doctors

As an almost newly minted veterinarian (practicing her thoracic surgery techniques sans backhoe) I would like to point out a whole group of docs who almost universally love fuzzy bunnies. Veterinarians! If it's an emergency, you can usually get to see your vet the same day. If it's REALLY an emergency, a lot of us STILL MAKE HOUSECALLS. Most of us are women, lots of us are in our childbearing years.

How did this happy state of affairs come to pass? Veterinary medicine is full of nice people, with all types of personalities. Some are workaholic type A, a lot see it as a job so sweet you get to bring your dog to work. As a rule, we don't deal with the government or insurance. We get to pick our clients. We don't get sued when the babies are born less than perfect. Heck, we don't even get sued 10 years down the road if that particular baby isn't performing well.

In short, we get to be doctors; curing sick animals, bringing babies into the world and making children smile.

And we welcome fuzzy bunnies into the office!

Hooray for Dr. M., my favorite new vet. Dr. S., a local vet who is also a beautiful woman, is wonderful, but she has refused to do the job the next time I require heart surgery. Dr. M. has agreed to do any heart surgery I will require. I'll take a D.V.M. over an M.D., and a woman over a man, any day to do surgery. Being professionally correct and non-sexist definitely stops at the knife.

Cold Spell

It was 6° here Saturday morning and the wind was howling through the treetops. When the new highway was built it took out the patch of woods north of the yard. Now the wind screams down from the north right across the place and the difference is quite apparent on days like Saturday.

The biggest problem is keeping the animals watered. The rabbit waterers have been freezing up in about 30 minutes and the water for the goats, geese, and turkeys doesn't last any longer. The geese like to stand around in ice water keeping their feet cool, the turkeys don't seem to notice the cold, and the goats have heavy coats that keep them warm enough. The ducks would be okay, too, but I'm keeping them in the barn, along with Ting, because it is easier to water them in there.

There is a wood stove in the barn which, if I put enough wood in it often enough, provides a warm area for the cats and dogs. However, I'm getting too old to be cutting lots of firewood so the cats and dogs have to rely on their own coats more than the stove, now. Trusty has a purple K-State sweater that he likes to wear and Tessie has such a thick coat she never notices the cold. Martha, the old mother cat, likes a warm spot by the stove though. So do I.

The hoses are useless in this weather so all the watering is done by carrying buckets, a process which invariably results in a shoe full of water at some point. Also, I have to carry firewood into the barn for the stove, a process which invariably results in smashing a finger somewhere. So, when I finally get in the house, I often end up trying to untie a frozen shoelace with a finger that is banged up and stiff. At that point I try to remember that my grandparents did all that and more, and the weather was colder then, too.

Farm News 02-12-06

Sunday morning, after chores, 22° - Brrr!

Bunnies! Bunnies!

Last week I tried to guess when the bunnies would be born. The spotted doe, who I thought had just been bred, surprised me and produced a litter on Sunday afternoon. The Black doe did the same on Tuesday. When they are ten days old their eyes open and they are then old enough to go visiting.

Actually, on Tuesday, when they were a few hours short of being two days old, I took three of the bunnies with me when I went to the cardiologist's office. As I have mentioned before, cardiologists are not to be trusted and when visiting a cardiologist a wise person takes along a good guard rabbit. In this case I took three because they were small, tiny in fact, but their long ears made it obvious they were fierce guard rabbits.

It was a good thing I took the guard rabbits, because the cardiologists had some surprises for me. There isn't anything wrong with my heart, the problem is with the cardiologists. They wanted me to wear a 24 hour heart monitor as part of a campaign to build up enough data to justify cutting into me again and installing a new, fancier pacemaker. The first monitor didn't work to suit them, so I had to go back and get another one. That one didn't work right, either, so no I'm waiting on a call to go back for a third try. I was delighted to hear that I wouldn't be charged for the extra office calls that were necessary because their hardware didn't work properly. If I hadn't been accompanied by those guard rabbits I might have been charged some ridiculous amount for the cardiologist's problem.

Last year, when the cardiologists decided I needed a stress test to check my heart, I took two bunnies with me and let them do the running on the treadmill. They enjoyed it a great deal more than I would have and my heart passed the test with high grades.

The cardiologists never touch the bunnies. Cardiologists are docs, and docs know that animals carry germs. Also, docs are workaholics and don't have time for foolishness like bunnies. I think it's sort of scary knowing that the health care system is operated by workaholics who won't touch bunnies.

Med schools are designed to weed out sane people and protect the medical profession from everyone who isn't an extreme type 'A' personality. The few normal people who make it through have to act like workaholics just to maintain their positions in the profession. The AMA has for many years had a policy of limiting the number of students in medical schools in this country so that there will be plenty of work for the workaholics to jump into. If they allowed the med schools to produce docs some them might, God forbid, have to take jobs in small towns where they could be subjected to all sorts of normalizing influences.

I know of only one medical practice where patients might feel that the place is operated by sane people. In that practice the majority of the physicians are women of child-bearing age, most of them actively involved in bearing their own children. If you call that office and tell them you need to see a physician you will probably be able to see one in less than 24 hours. In that office there are no paper medical records. In the waiting room there are toys for children and magazines other than Golf Digest. All of which proves that allowing women to become physicians may destroy medicine as we know it. Check out http://www.conventionalmedicinewatch.com/001626.html.

It's true, bunnies do have germs on them. However, the staph infection I brought home from the hospital came from the backhoe the thoracic surgeon used to operate on me, not a rabbit.

Shotgun and Ting

Shotgun is a large young female cat, Martha's replacement as kitten maker. Martha is over twelve years old and has not successfully raised a kitten for several years. She is a tiny, apartment-sized, cat, quiet, calm, and undemanding. Shotgun is Holstein-sized, demanding, and ostentatious.

Ting is an aging Polish Crested hen, known for her total lack of integrity, bad disposition, and screwy ideas. Ting used to be half of Ting and Ling, The Somerset Twins, a pair of unrelated Polish Crested chickens who claimed to be Broadway stars. Ling would set on eggs, although she usually moved around among several nests, setting on one for a few days, and then another for a few days. She was never successful in hatching a chick using this technique. Ting is too neurotic to be able consider motherhood. Ling disappeared late last summer; most of us feel that she wandered into one of the fairy kingdoms and is still nearby but not visible.

Ting has her own roost in the barn, away from all the other poultry. Ting expects some privacy, unlike common birds. Her roosting site, though not occupied by any other birds, is occasionally subject to invasion by a cat, Shotgun to be specific. Shotgun will often slip down to Ting's roost and sit down beside her.

Ting, of course, is offended by this invasion of her space, so she pecks the intruder. Shotgun considers any attention to be a just reward for her superior performance as a cat. That cat sits there and purrs while that stupid chicken pecks at it. And Bilbo Baggins thought he had seen some strange things . . ..

Hot news: Shotgun is in heat. Gestation for cats is 64 days.

Religion Under Attack: Quick, Rally the Faithful!

Now the Muslims are all bent out of shape because Islam has been insulted by some cartoonist in Denmark. We should be able to understand the problem, we have exactly the same one: a bunch of political wannabes, disguised in clerical garb, trying to rally the followers by screaming that their religion is under attack. Baloney. No serious Christian could believe Pat Robertson when he declares that “Merry Christmas” is under attack and no serious Muslim believes the Danish cartoons are an attack on Islam. What all this uproar proves is that there are very few people who are serious about their religion.

Farm News 02-05-06

Sunday morning, after chores


The Pond

The pond is quite pretty now, although the dam is a ruin. The downstream side of the dam is all gullied and eroded from the ten inch rain last year. The pond, though, is a pretty sea green color with pale green moss growing on all the weed stalks and sticks remaining in the water. The water is clear enough to see four feet or more down through it.

A friend who has a small pond stocked it some years ago with grass carp to control the moss. Now he has very little moss and seven grass carp that are each about 30 inches long. He calls them his submarine fleet. I think this pond might benefit from a submarine fleet, also.

No fish have shown themselves but there are probably a few in there. The storm that damaged the dam probably washed some fish down from the next pond upstream. The head of the stream is about a quarter mile north where a good spring feeds a nice pond. All of the watershed for the stream is pasture so the stream stays relatively clean. In addition, there is a marshy area with lots of cattails and willows between the two ponds that cleans the water.

I need to come up with a small boat, a little duck boat or something that a kid can row around the pond. Maybe I could handle that. There isn't room for anything much larger. The pond is long and narrow and, at the upper end, choked with fallen trees.

Which will I see first this spring: a fish, a tadpole, or a turtle? One of the minnow huggers might know. The last time I filled the pond it filled with an incredibly dense population of bullfrog tadpoles the first spring. Perhaps it is time to delve into limnology. Googling the expression “new pond”, in quotes, produced 73,000 hits.

Ducks Hear Joke, Quack Up

Adult male ducks have deep, fairly quiet, voices. Adult female ducks, especially in the spring, have loud voices that sound like crazy laughing. Four of the young ducks in the barn are females and have started their laughing. If I time it right I can sometimes tell them a joke and then they all laugh. Makes me feel like a great comedian.

What do you get when you cross a duck and a kettle? A quackpot!
Why do ducks hate to get mail? They always have bills.
And, they love this one:
What do you call a person who keeps ducks? A bill collector.
Why do ducks dislike sidewalks? They're afraid they'll step on a quack.

Rabbit Pregnancies (?)

Twice I have put the black doe in with the buck and both times she refused to stand, i.e. mate, with him. The other doe, a bit spotted one, looks like a buck. She has a square, short nose that looks like it belongs on a buck. Today I tried the acid test and put her in with the buck. She stood for him and they mated. I cannot remember the gestation period for rabbits.

So, I googled it, (actually, I used Ask, which gave me the answer on the second line), and found that the period is 29 to 35 days. If I count correctly, a brave assumption, then she will be due the week of March 4th.

This is all very important to me because I have two appointments scheduled with the cardiologist, one for an echo cardiogram, whatever the hell that is, and the other for an annual followup. The echo appointment is for 2/23 and the followup for 3/7. Anyone with experience knows that cardiologists are dangerous and that one should take a rabbit along for protection whenever making a visit to a cardiologist's office.

The question is, “when will the bunnies be born?” The spotted doe will kindle (have bunnies) after March 4. The bunnies will be ready to travel to town 11 days later: they will have their eyes open and be moving around and friendly. Actually, they can travel to town at about 8 days of age, but their eyes are still closed and all they do is lie there, mostly.

The black doe came here on January 7, supposedly pregnant. That means that she should kindle within the next 6 days at the latest. If she has bunnies then they will be old enough for the 2/23 echo date, but too old by 3/7. It looks to me like I need to find a doe who was bred last week in order to have bunnies for the 3/7 appointment.

On March 7 I meet with the great man himself, the cardiologist. The echo cardiogram will be much more fun because it will be done by a lot of younger, more interesting, people, most of them pretty females, probably. Bunnies know how to handle these sorts of people.

Defending against physicians is difficult. A real person, looking at a 10 day old bunny, will say, “Ahh,” and immediately want to pick it up. A physician, in the same situation, will say, “Careful,” seeing not a bunny but a lump of potential bacterial and fungal infections. They put a special spray on the air filters in teaching hospitals to produce this type of response.

Because it is late winter there is little of interest to write about in the country, so I will be keeping you informed of what happens with the cardiologist for a while. Bear with me, please.

GrandNephew

Let's see, by proper genealogical reckoning, Jeff is my cousin's grandson, thus making him my first cousin twice removed. I prefer to consider him a GrandNephew, it just feels right. Anyway, he is about 14 and he has an opportunity to take a tour group to Europe. I am a fervent believer in the proposition that all 14 year old kids should have an opportunity to travel to a foreign country, preferably one on another continent. Jeff has been 'selected to be a member of a People to People tour of England and France', an opportunity which, for only $5,000, will allow him to go to Europe. I'd like to see him go, he's a good kid and I think it will help him be a better citizen. But I think that he could go for a lot less money, have more fun, and have a better story when he gets home.

For a 14 year old, the primary factor in the cost of a trip to Europe is the intelligence of the traveler. The early-teen traveler who understands the basics of personal security and knows enough not to get drunk in a foreign country can usually get by with minimal adult supervision, which can save some money; the big savings, though, come to the traveler who knows how to plan a trip. If you can build your itinerary here, complete with reservations for lodging when needed, and you are a teenager, you can go to Europe, have fun, and come back without regrets for less than $3,000.

The first skill necessary for planning is writing. The traveler needs to know how to write thank you notes to the people who sent money to help with the trip. A thank you note improves the chances or your getting another donation for another trip. You need to be able to use the Web to plan your transportation, find lodging, make reservations, and then write ahead for confirmations. You look like you know what you are doing if everyone expects you when you show up.

Traveling alone is possible but it's a lot more fun if you are with a friend or two. Purchase a Eurail pass, live out of your backpacks, sleep on the trains, and eat bread and cheese. Before you go learn how to say yes, no, thank you, please, and, where is the bathroom in French and German. That will probably keep you out of serious trouble. Learn the exchange rates before you go so you know how much you are paying for things.

When on the train try to attach yourselves to families with younger kids. Read to the kids, play with them, and generally make yourselves useful. Their parents will help you find your way and stay out of trouble.

If no one else jumps in to add helpful hints for teen travelers, I'll try to add more soon. Dear daughter, you went to Europe at age 14, what do you think?2-05 -


Ting's Elevator

Ting and 'Fro, the two Polish Crested chickens, are astonishingly stupid at first view, but seem to succeed quite well in a complex world. 'Fro is the chicken house rooster: the big tough guy who stays with the layer flock and protects them from predators. In other words, he's a 'good' pimp. Ting is a barn resident, overly endowed with Dodo genes.

Ting likes to roost on a step ladder, fourth step up from the bottom, that hangs by the place where I feed the ducks. She has figured out that she can jump onto my arm as I come up to feed the ducks and then ride down to the ground, landing right beside the duck feed, which she likes. On the way down she has an opportunity to poop on my arm, or down the front of my coat, or on my shoe.

Ting's Doctor

Ting's favorite veterinarian, Dr. M., has passed her boards. She has a bit of internship time left, and graduation ceremonies, and then she will be a fully-fledged veterinarian, capable of flying on her own. Ting sends her congratulations and a peck on the ankle.

Book Review

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke, ended about halfway down page 782, leaving Drusilla no wiser than she was when I began reading it to her. The woman who recommended the book, a middle-aged relative, is apparently influenced by spiritualism and magical claptrap, but Drusilla is entirely too practical to care about such things. Eating bugs and laying eggs are more interesting to Drusilla. As for me, I prefer cowboy stories, unless the cowboys start acting like queers.