From left to right: Cher, Dolly, Liza, and Carole. Not pictured: Janis. You can see it's still a little muddy in the chicken yard, and somebody tracked dirt on the eggs while laying or rearranging the eggs afterward.
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From left to right: Cher, Dolly, Liza, and Carole. Not pictured: Janis. You can see it's still a little muddy in the chicken yard, and somebody tracked dirt on the eggs while laying or rearranging the eggs afterward.
]]>We've renamed him Schwa. His former name was "Dingo" which we agreed was a bad-luck name around babies.
He came with his own cat tree, which has been a real boon. When we finished the dining room walls, we moved the tree by the back window and now he spends most of the day up there staring at the birds in the garden.
He also uses the vantage point to keep track of what the dogs are doing.
It's not his only spot. He's adapting quite well to living in an old house under construction.
We had Rosie's BFF neighbor dog Beanie overnight, and in the morning we had pancakes. So beanie got to take part in our weekly ritual. She was pretty good at it, but it's definitely much more work to get three dogs to cooperate for photos than it is one or two.
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When the sun gets low in the sky, a chicken's instinct says it's time to get somewhere up high.
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Goldie socked out in the hallway because it was too hot.
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They're almost all grown now! We just have to wait for them to stop peeping like babies, and they can be mixed into the main flock.
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Janis in the grass. She seemed to want to be separate from the others more than I would have expected.
Liza getting agitated at the chicks (actually, just Liza getting agitated about wanting to come out)
Dolly (left) and Elvira (right) with Cornpuff and Spot in the background. Yes, I believe the name for the chick with the widow's peak will be Elvira. My grandmother Elvira has been gone for long enough now that I don't have to feel guilty.
Dot dashing:
Liza has a close encounter with a chick (that's Spot) and is mostly just confused about what it might be:
Goldie was mostly just lying in the sun ignoring the chicks. Dolly felt that was reason to go check out what she was.
Elvira pokes her head into a picture of Cornpuff at the last second:
"WTF is that?"
"I don't know but its breath smells terrible."
Everybody was very interested in the chicken yard:
But mostly they were all interested in scratching and pecking at the ground for stuff to eat.
I get the feeling Elvira is going to be quite the photo-chick. She seemed to stop and stare at the camera as soon as I took it out.
This is Dot (who I am informed will be called Pepper):
(Aren't those tailfeathers adorable?)
And Spot (the future Salt):
Little Dolly growing tailfeathers:
And a somewhat blurry Cornball (who may become Cinnamon? They're still not sure):
(Yes, she did poop on the photo studio set just as I snapped the photo.)
And finally the chick who is ours but as yet unnamed. Anybody know any female singers who have a prominent widow's peak?
Here we have them in the first few days, playing with a piece of the shipping crate they came in. I used it to test whether they were ready to have wood chips down as bedding (which you have to be careful about, since they might eat them to the point of illness).
Then we went outside.
I think we will be keeping this chick, and I am provisionally calling her Dolly (for Dolly Parton).
We tried some experiments with the dog and chicks (apparently it's very hard to focus a camera with one hand while trying to make sure the chick doesn't fall off the dog's head). This chick is the Silver-Laced Wyandotte, and we will be calling her Janis (for Janis Joplin, because she spent her first few days stumbling around the habitat and falling over her feet).
I've given pet names to the two Barred Rocks who will go to the neighbors. They are Spot and Dot. This is Spot, who has a big white spot on her head.
Here's Rosie admiring the little chicky butts.
This is one of the easter-eggers, which the neighbor's kid calls Stripes. I think this will also be our chick, and I'm not sure what her name will be.
The little outdoor excursions are to give them something to think about that is new and interesting. They had a pretty good time easting weed seeds.
I'm pretty sure that this chick will be going to the neighbors. The neighbor-kid calls her Cornpuff and seems to love her best. She really liked sheltering under Rosie; I think the chicks have decided the dogs are their mommies.
We tried out putting Dolly on Rosie's back to see how she would do:
Given that the chicks hardly ever sit still even without being on fur, she did a decent job of holding still, and Rosie did even better.
This is how I took the chicks out for their first exercise hour: a big canning pot. Lots of jokes about chickens in the stewpot.
Here they are in their habitat with fancy wood chip bedding and their feeder and waterer up on bricks for their convenience.
Another exercise hour, Dot poking around in the dirt:
And Dolly growing out some butt feathers:
You can really see Dot's smaller head dot (smaller than Spot's, of course) here:
I thought the canning pot might be uncomfortable, so we tried out the shipping box they came in for the next visit outside:
Clockwise from top left: Janis (Silver-Laced Wyandotte), unnamed easter-egger, Dot (Barred Rock), Dolly (easter-egger), Spot (Barred Rock), Cornpuff (easter-egger).
So there's really only one name we need to come up with, and in part that has to wait until we're sure which easter-egger is going to the neighbors.
]]>She was 18, which is not bad for a barn cat.
Here are some photos of her. It's all very raw right now because she was my bestest friend for 17 years.
Here she is napping in 1999 or thereabouts. I was forever coming up and trying to get a photo of her asleep, and just as I would hit the button her eyes would pop open and she would glare at me for waking her.
With her co-cat Mikey in 2001. Mikey died in 2003 and is buried under our Cecile Brunner.
Scowling at me to get the camera out of her face and leave her alone. Ana was a very angry cat.
Coming out of the greenhouse window in our kitchen in Berkeley. When you saw this you knew some poor plant had been chewed within an inch of its life.
We buried her by the side gate, next to the clematis. I put a bed of grass in the grave because she liked getting out and eating grass until she puked, and a bouquet of flowers over her head because she loved eating cut flowers and puking them up on the stairs. We planted a yellow miniature rose over her, sent by Noel's parents for our anniversary. I miss her already.
Edited to add: By popular request, this photo of Ana being introduced to Rosie in December 2001. She got up there and arranged herself on that doily without any hinting or helping from anybody else.
You can watch my unboxing video:
And perhaps a tour of the contents? Some for us, some for the neighbors, but we will raise them together until they are old enough to live outside. Do they have names yet? No, they do not. We'll be casting around for female singer names for a bit, I think.
Here's a Barred Rock (neighbors):
Another Barred Rock (also neighbors):
Silver-Laced Wyandotte (us):
And 3 Easter-Eggers (us or them, undecided):
They enjoyed exploring their aquarium habitat
And now some movies, because they're so cute at this age that movies are best:
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Noel went to the hardware store, and left the poor, abandoned dogs behind.
]]>Just about everybody has asked, so finally I will post a picture with proof:
They just stand out in the rain. Sometimes they look indignant that somebody is sprinkling water on them, but mostly they do their normal stuff, or as normal as it can be. Only during the worst downpours have I ever seen them take refuge in their room, although it is open and available to them all day.
When the sun comes out, they fluff up and dry out. If it doesn't come out, they seem to just stay out in the rain all day until sunset, when they get up on their perch and preen in the nice dry chicken room.
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