who's the boss?

The problem with animals

        You may think I am taking way to many prescriptions drugs and I need to back off on something but I think these animals are out to get me or at least make their lives easier at my expense. It does cost to keep them and in effect I am buying my own misery.

      Yesterday morning arrived bright and early as it usually does , because I wasn’t really up to verify it had come in as it is supposed to, instead I have a tendency to just let things happen as I get older . It has with repeated regularity made it up every day of my life and I assume it will continue longer than I,doing the same. With that comes the change of seasons, and no longer a need to carry water for my ducks.

      On my rounds of entitlement which starts with my heifer mudder, and  since there is only one cow assuring she cannot get to far away from home considering I feed her twice a day this would mean she could only trek about 3 hours away before she would have to return to get her feed. Don’t tell her but I cut back her feed and only give her half of what she was getting on a daily basis.

      Anyhow it is still a pain in the butt as I really can’t decide whether I want this irritation of feeding her and tending to her. On this note I must say her stall is the cleanest I have seen for a cow lately as I have more than enough bedding to go round since she wastes about half her hay. In fact to get dirty She has taken to going out and muddying her face rubbing on an old stump. The only problem is that she does it like war paint, applying it to her eyes, and eerily making me wonder. War her? And who with, me? Quite possibly since it’s either me, babe, or buddy she has to contend with. And then again maybe she knows she is only getting half her feed. But then she may be in alliance with them all to slowly drive me out of my mind.

       It’s always a mystery around here, just as it was with Mr. Duck being gone and me ending up placing Ms. Quackers in the greenhouse. Winter here was brutal and although there was always a hole in the pond surface for air, it was pretty froze over most of the time though and leaving her out there would have resulted in losing her also as she had no means of escape.  I had to go through considerable trouble to capture my lone duck that one cold night and I placed her in the greenhouse for safekeeping after she lost her mate. Well the safekeeping is over and the free ride of these animals has come to an end or has it?

      After enabling my heifer with her enticement to stay home by way of feed  and being the recipient of dark stares wondering if she really does know she is only getting half feed and do I really have a mad cow contemplating revenge ,  I move on to the ducks and chickens. Next on my list of who I enable here on the farm.

      Some call them chores indicating labor for profit, well with my animals I have already spent the profit, and it is an annoyance at best but for some masochistic reason I pursue them if nothing else to gain a laugh now and then and to keep me moving.

     The ducks or should I say Ms. Quackers,  requires 2- five gallon buckets of fresh water mind you . Carried and poured into her tub as the green guy or greenie as he would like me to now call him, stands and watches over her but has never dared to entertain himself in the drinking water yet. She waddles herself up into the tub while quacking loudly does a duck dance and crooks her head, dunks it and lets the water roll down her back,  and takes a bath. Daily, in fact actually, twice daily this ritual has gone on for over a month and a half. So morning and night I carry water as it is too cold to get the hoses out yet, or leave them hooked up, instead I use two five gallon buckets and fill her little feed tub up with water and then sprinkle some duck feed on top.

       Now you remember the duck feed is not really duck feed but instead fish food, but the ducks always thought it was theirs. Well she and Mr. Greenie although still new to the game but learning quickly, still believe it is duck food . So I pepper her little feed tub filled with water with some duck food. Give them some scratch on the side and boom done with the chores. Except they are still in my greenhouse along with the chickens and the four of them are ruling the roost, as I need them to evacuate so I can get some planting done. No damn way, I was informed yesterday by way of a Mexican standoff between me and a duck. Had no idea what she had in mind had I allowed things to progress to far, and I am sure it would be in collaboration with the heifer, but Ms.  Quackers had no intention of changing her present living arrangements.

      Maybe it was Wyle E. Coyote or whatever carried Mr. Duck away, but she had no intention of stepping out of the door to the greenhouse. The ponds had thawed and open water was ripe for duck dunking and was just a few yards from her and yet she was not going out the door no matter how many times I waved or yelled at her. At one point in the insanity of grown man standing in his greenhouse waving his arms and talking to a duck like Bob Ross calmly  trying to teach you how to  paint and i likewise trying  to  shoo a duck out the door I had imagined I was actually having a conversation with her. And she said. “Hell no I won’t go.”

       And I asked, “Why?” Of course.

      She asked “What is it with you humans?” And then she goes on to say, “First you want me here, then there, and then there is a coyote that takes my peeps and steals my mate, you chase me down in the snow at one point busting through the ice of the pond throwing sticks at me , and then finally catch me and throw me in here and now you want me gone?”

      I said, “Yeah that’s about it.”

     “I don’t understand why you just can’t let me be?” She asks pleadingly.

    I said, “Well it’s not that easy, you see you still require these 2 buckets of water twice daily and I need my greenhouse back, you guys are wrecking it and could only imagine what you will do to my plants. You are always knocking over the trees and plucking insulation off the walls. What is that all about?”

    “That is those damn chickens doing that.” She scolds me as if to remind me that she isn’t capable of plucking anything with a bill.  

     Out of my fan now converted to a chicken roost, from above I hear, ”Don’t blame us for your misfortune there Ms. Quacky bitch leave us out of this.”

       I sternly said “Its time you all go.”

      Old red, the chicken says to me,” That Ms.Quacky bitch is what started all the trouble with everything. We were fine until she showed up here.”

     Ms. Quackers comes back with ,”Aw crap you are the ones hooked on insulation , and you are the ones tearing everything up and knocking the trees over. Tell them Greenie.” As she stared at Greenie for confirmation.

     Greenie looks at me and just quacks a meager quack as if to say I can talk yet.

     As quickly as I imagined the conversation it was over and here I was again a dumb farmer standing in his greenhouse trying to evict animals he was trying to save, and the reality of it all hit me and I acquiesced and grabbed the buckets, and filled the tub with water and smiled as I watched Ms. Quackers jump into her little pond and do her dance and wash her self and probably crap in the water. Maybe that is why she needs new water 2x daily?

     Well it went kinda like that. Well maybe not so much with the conversation thing , but mentally we had a moment and the Ms. Quackers  won. Her time is coming as well for those pesky insulation eating chickens. All have to go.