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Posts Tagged ‘Death’

Death of a dream

Posted in Random, tagged , , , , on October 17, 2009| 4 Comments »

I received the following depressing e-mail yesterday:

Hi Ruben and Beth,

Unfortunately, we only received seven applications for the Mexico 2009 off-campus programs.
I had hoped that a few more might come in this week, but no luck.

I have notified the applicants that the trip has been canceled for this year—hopefully we will be able to schedule it again in the future.

Blaine

There needs to be at least 12 students. What happened to all the “I’m going!” folks? I was really looking forward to conducting this off-campus program. On the bright side, I now have two extra weeks of freedom in December.

No Guanajuato mummy museum for me

No Museo de las Momias for me


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The case of the missing chicken

Posted in Chickens, tagged , , , , , , on September 27, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I had to have the following conversation with my neighbor’s middle-aged son.

Me, at the front door: “Um, hi. Sorry to bother you, but have you seen my chicken?”

Him: “Oh that’s yours? My dad was going to go buy some feed.”

Me: “Yeah, it’s mine. She learned how to get out and now we can’t find her. If you see her, she answers to the name of ‘Trish.'”

Him: “I had some chickens when I lived in Pooler. They are unusual animals.”

Occasionally, Trish has flown the coop. Once nabbed and returned, she usually stays in for a few days. Yesterday, though, she was bold. Every time Eddie and I went outside, she was out of her yard. We must have captured her six times. And Eddie was mad because she kept kicking the pine straw out of the flower beds.

Today, we came home around lunchtime and she was gone. Yes, I walked around our house and the neighborhood hollering “Trish!” and feeling like a buffoon. I figured I would only worry if she didn’t return to the coop at night.

I started to wash my car and I heard Dominic yelling, “Mama, I found Trish!” I looked up and saw him coming from the side yard holding Trish to his chest. She seemed oddly content. Apparently, she had been amusing herself near the backyard fence. I don’t know how I could have missed her when I was walking around.

I knew it was time to clip her wings to avoid future AWOLs. Trish = grounded.

Clipping in progress

Clipping in progress

The clipped wing

The result. No birds were harmed in the clipping of the wing.

The boys give Trish some love

We’re rednecks. My shirtless kids like to hang out with the chicken.

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Why?

Posted in Chickens, tagged , , , , , , , on September 20, 2009| 1 Comment »

I woke up one morning and wanted chickens. I don’t know why. I just did. I mentioned it to my long-suffering husband Eddie, who said, “You’re kidding, right?”

I gave it a week. I still wanted chickens. So I asked Eddie to make a coop (he’s handy). He ignored me. I think he thought I would forget about it. I didn’t.

I went to a feed store and took a picture of a coop. I researched coop designs. I drew the plan and gave it to Eddie. He sighed and went into the garage.

The coop is a fancy, two-story affair with a covered run. The back is chicken wire and we put it up against one of our sunroom windows so that we could check on the chickens and egg production from the comfort of our home.

The finished product

I made friends at the feed store. They called me when a new batch of chicks arrived. Eddie and I picked out two Araucanas, a Rhode Island Red and a Sex Link. I named them Heidi, Terri, Trish and Linda after four good friends.

All was well for almost a month. We kept them inside until it was time for them to move into the coop.

The weekend after the big move-in, we went out of town and left the neighbor girl in charge of checking on them. Her dad called us on Saturday night to report there had been a mishap.

We returned home to find an unpleasant scene. Only Trish was still alive. We called her namesake. Human Trish said, “Of course she was the smartest one.” Human Terri was very sad. Human Heidi wanted a forensics expert called in. Human Linda couldn’t be reached for comment at the time.

We had a dilemma: We didn’t want Trish to be lonely, but we couldn’t add an adult chicken in with her, or more chicks because of pecking order issues. We decided to wait until she was full-grown, then add a friend.


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Trish

Posted in Chickens, tagged , , , , on September 19, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Photo by Elizabeth Raley Osterberger

Meet Trish, a Rhode Island Red who lives in our side yard. She was one of four chicks who came home with me in March. While we were out of town in April, they escaped from the coop, and Trish was the only one wily enough to escape Maggie the Boxer. We came home to carnage: Little bird bodies scattered everywhere. And that was the end of Linda, Heidi and Terri.

Trish has the personality of her namesake. She is smart and chatty, but definitely has an attitude. She laid her first egg, appropriately, on Labor Day, and every day since. Well, every day except Sunday. Trish observes the Sabbath.

She tends to lay eggs at 10 a.m. I looked in the coop just before the magic time this morning and there was no egg, and Trish was nowhere to be found. I went back inside the garage to get her more water, and when I came back, there was an egg in the coop. It was like a drive-by laying.

I collected it and was a little weirded out: The egg was warm. I knew it would be, but it was still a little gross.

Up next: I’ll explain why I wanted chickens in the first place.

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