29 November, 2010

Action Puppy Goes Home

We sent Musket back to Blackthorn Kennel yesterday with Christine, who came to pick him up. The house seems kind of quiet without him and we do miss him, although we knew all along he was just here for the week. It was a great learning experience for all concerned I think. If I had the time to put into training with him, Christine would have had to pry Musket from my cold dead hands, seriously. He is going to make someone a great working partner: willing, bright, able, and happy to snuggle or keep your feet warm at the end of the day. He’s polite to other dogs, learns quickly not to bother dog-savvy cats who are willing to whack him once or twice, but a little bit of a pest with a cat who has a serious lack of healthy fear like Rooney Lee. Someone looking for a working candidate is going to get a real treasure in Musket, I tell you what.

In other news, we’ve received 19 eggs from the chickens, which means we are down to $42/egg. We sent six home with my parents at Thanksgiving, since they wanted to try home-raised eggs. Ayinnanku and Bebelina continue to grow, and we’re hopeful that soon they’ll be able to go in with the big chickens since temps are dropping here at the Manor.

And now it’s time to go enjoy a movie with the family, although we will have an empty spot on the futon and no one will be dropping balls coated in a heavy layer of dog slobber on us at key moments in the film. Ah, Musket, you’ll be missed!

28 November, 2010

Answering More Googled Questions

1) how do box turtles move

While at first glance box turtles appear to move by walking, this is actually just some clever misdirection on their part. Hidden cameras have shown that when an Eastern Box Turtle thinks no one is looking, it retracts its legs into its shell and engages its hoverjets, which propel it over the landscape at some truly startling speeds. This is why if you look away from a turtle, when you look back it will have moved much farther than you thought it would.

2) did swakhammer die

No, he’s just hibernating for the winter. What’s that? You were looking for results related to Cherie Priest’s books? That would be a spoiler, so I’m not telling you. Go buy the books and read them.

3) feline politics

They’re complicated and Machiavellian. My best advice is, don’t get involved unless you really have to, and then it’s best to do so from a distance behind a bunker composed of couch cushions while wielding a squirt bottle. Even then, you’ll have to sleep some time, so make sure your bedroom is secure from feline incursions. No matter how kind and snuggly your cat is, he’ll still smother you in your sleep for interfering with his play for the best sunbeam.

26 November, 2010

Musket says dogs are carnivores.

We spent a hilarious 20 minutes the other night trying to feed Musket green beans. Our dogs love green beans, so when we had some for dinner I was of course handing them out to dogs. At first, Musket would only sniff at it, eyes wide with horror, while the other dogs jockeyed to get the green bean that he was manifestly not eating. Then, deciding it was terribly important to the people that he take this appalling object, he would curl his lips back and take the green bean with this front teeth with utmost delicacy before dropping it on the floor.

Eventually, after we kept trying to convince him to eat a green bean, he took one to his crate and buried it in his blanket. Further attempts to convince him that this was actually a tasty treat did convince him to actually bite into one, at which he looked even more horrified and immediately spat it out on the floor, where one of the other dogs promptly grabbed it.

It really was funny, because you could see his desire to be a Good Dog warring with his deep, deep horror of the innocent green bean. In the end, we stopped persecuting him with strange vegetables, lest he tell Christine that we abused him. I expect he’ll be more excited about his portion of Thanksgiving turkey. Still, Entertainment!Puppy continues to be entertaining. He really is a hell of a dog, and I keep thinking “if only I did not work so much…”

25 November, 2010

Chickens love egg.

It’s a little creepy, to be honest. Anyway, I hope you are having a lovely Thanksgiving if you’re in the US, gentle readers! And if you are not, I hope you’re having a lovely Thursday. Either way, I invite you to enjoy this slightly creepy video of Matilda and Lorena and an eggshell. We save the shells off their eggs when we eat them and give them back to the chickens to replenish their calcium supplies. As an Egg Cost Update, on Tuesday we got our twelfth egg from the girls (it was one of Matilda’s) which means we are down to a cost of $66 per egg. We have saved $3.24 on eggs to date, going by the current cost of cage-free non-organic eggs. A tiny blow against factory farming, but there you go.

The players in this video are Matilda, an Australorp who is the Top Hen and who gets first pick of treats, and Lorena, a silver-laced Wyandotte who is forever hopeful that the Top Hen will share the treats.

Transcript:
Me: *smoochy noises*
Matilda and Lorena: WHAT FRESH CALUMNY IS THIS, STRANGE FEATHERLESS SCARY THING?[1]
Me: *smoochy noises* *waves the eggshell temptingly*
Lorena: It is an eggshell! OMG! I am dubious of the strange featherless scary thing, but EGG!
Matilda: There is an egg?
Me: *tosses the eggshell to the ground*
Lorena: OH GOD THE FEATHERLESS BIPED IS THROWING THINGS RUN AWAY RUN WAY!
Matilda: AN EGG! OH RAPTURE AN EGG! *runs toward the featherless scary biped to get the eggshell* *begins pecking at it*
Lorena: What do you have there? Do you want to shaaaare the egg? *approaching from behind Matilda*
Matilda: It is my eggshell! I do not want to share the egg!
Lorena: SHARE THE EGG! SHARE THE EGG!
Matilda: I WILL NOT SHARE THE EGG! *runs off, Lorena in hot pursuit*

[1] THEY ARE NORMALLY QUITE GOOD ABOUT ME COMING IN THE PEN, BUT TO GET THE VIDEO I MADE THE ALARMING CHOICE OF SITTING ON ONE OF THEIR RECREATIONAL STUMPS. THEY DISAPPROVED.

24 November, 2010

X-TREEM VIDEO

Here is Musket, being Entertainment!Puppy briefly. It has to be brief because if you play hose with him for too long, he swallows dangerously large amounts of air and water. But, y’know, a brief game on a warm and sunny fall afternoon is pretty good stuff.

Transcript:
Water: runs!
Musket: I KEEL YOU! *snap*
Water: runs some more.
Musket: DIE! *SNAP*
Water: still running!
Musket WHARRRRRRRRGARBL! *SNAPSNAPSNAP*

He really does love to play hose and was all kinds of disappointed when I declared the game over after 30 seconds because I didn’t want him to bloat. He is also deeply interested in pretty much everything humans are doing and would like to be involved, please. Oh and he is convinced that he is a lapdog, at least where Daniel is concerned, and is prone to heaving his front half into Daniel’s lap while clutching a slimy tennis ball in his mouth. He will attempt to hand you his slimy tennis ball repeatedly if you don’t appear to be busy, which would be more charming if it didn’t result in slime-trails on the legs of your pants as he rolls it enticingly across your leg.

On the plus side, he regards it as a pretty fun game if you take the ball, ask him to sit, and then hand it back while encouraging him to take it nicely from your hand. This doggy, he LOVES to work, even simple work. I almost feel like I should be having him do my Econ homework or something for me. I’m pretty sure that if he thought I’d throw the ball afterward, he would definitely work up the supply curve for an oligopolistic industry.

23 November, 2010

Baby chickens!

Who wants a couple baby chicken pictures? No one? All right then, I’ll just take these and– what’s that? My gentle readers do want baby chicken pictures? Happily, I have uploaded a couple! The babies got a little time to explore the run with me running interference, but are now safely behind a separate fence where the big chickens cannot persecute them. We’ll see how it goes. I may end up dragging the ex-pen out there to make them a bigger area in the run as they grow.

Ayinnanku and Bebelina. Ayinnanku is in back, a small black chicken with coppery feathers on her neck. Bebelina is in front, a tiny brown chicken whose feathers sport delicate black patterning, and with gold feathers on her neck.
That’s Ayinnanku in back and Bebelina in front. They are tiny at the moment; Ayinnanku is about a third of the size of the adult girls and Bebelina is maybe a quarter of their size. And no, the chicken water does not normally look like that.

Here’s a better one of Bebelina, to show off her gorgeous feathers. I took this one after they were moved into their pen-within-a-pen.
Bebelina, a Welsummer, viewed from above. You can see the delicate black penciling on her coppery brown body feathers, and her gold head and neck. There's a scattering of green leaves behind her and in front of her is a waterer on a piece of 2x4.
That’s baby spinach on the ground behind her.

Ayinnanku is much flightier than Bebelina and did not wish to pose for pictures in the baby pen. She’ll come around, I’m sure. Since they haven’t grown their combs yet the girls look a little like teeny misshapen hawks, which is adorable. I am tempted to go out there with a leather glove and see if I can convince Bebelina to perch on it, just for fun.

Oh and here’s one of eggs nine and ten that we got Sunday, one from each of the adult hens so you can see the difference! These eggs took us down to a cost of $80/egg, which is very exciting!
A hand and wrist, clad in a shabby faux-shearling coat. The hand cradles two eggs, side by side. The egg on the left is skinny, the egg on the right is fat and round. Both eggs are a warm pale brown.
The one on the left is from Matilda, the one on the right is from Lorena. Matilda, the Australorp, reliably lays a daily egg. Lorena is a more irregular donor of eggs, which is expected as the days get shorter. Australorps are known for being good layers even in the winter, so we may continue to see eggs from Matilda on a daily basis until she gets old. Lorena will probably pick up more in the spring, round about the time the little girls are getting old enough to lay. We will likely see a dozen eggs every three days this summer, which I suspect is more eggs than we’re going to eat even given my deep love of custards. So if I see you and I hand you a half-dozen oddly colored and shaped eggs, well, please try to understand.

22 November, 2010

Mister Fluffybutt Gets A Clue

It’s interesting having a puppy in the house again. I mean, Musket is not a tiny puppy, but he is only 10 months old. This is occasionally difficult to remember because he’s a big boy, but at ten months old he’s not really expected to have his WHOLE brain grown in. He does have half a brain, and it’s a pretty prodigious half a brain, but he’s not quite got the self-control of an older dog yet.

So anyway, new dogs are always fascinated by the cats. Mr. Fluffybutt is no exception. He is not out to hurt cats, but he really, really wants to interact with cats and possibly play with them. The cats, on the other hand, are not accustomed to the laser-focused stare of a drivey dog. Well, none of us really are, because generally speaking I prefer softer dogs and so that is what I have: dogs who can be roused to intensity by favorite treats or toys but who generally speaking are pretty happy to lounge on the couch with a chewie. But I digress. Musket is a very intense dog, who very intensely wants to interact with fascinating cat beasts, and the fascinating cat beasts would very much like him to not interact with him.

Initially, Musket thought it would be fun to play chasey games with cats. This worked really well with Aida, who took one look at him and said “Oh hell no!” and bolted for the cat rooms. Then he tried to play it with Braxton Bragg. For comparison: Aida weighs about seven pounds. Braxton is roughly three times her size. Neither one of them suffer fools or puppies gladly, but while Aida’s tactic is to remove herself to a secure area, Braxton’s modus operandi is to catch the offender across the face with two or three lightning-fast right hooks. With claws. And he holds a grudge.

Having thus been discouraged from playing chasey games with Braxton Bragg, Musket next optimistically decided he’d try with Emmaline. Emms looks like a much safer bet, she weighs about eight pounds and does not swagger like young Master Bragg. Unfortunately for Musket’s deliriously joyful plans for playing with her, she grew up in the woods and believes very deeply in her right to self-defense and also has all her claws. Since Musket isn’t aggressive, just playful, he came off the worse for wear in that encounter, too.

So by the time he got around to contemplating playing with Roo, who has no teeth and no claws, he was deeply respectful of the personal space of cats. Once he attempted to suck on Roo’s head and was reprimanded by the people, and now he leaves cats alone except to stand at a respectful distance and sometimes cry from frustration because he wants to play with cats SO MUCH and cats do not love him back and want to play with him. In fact he has been cornered by cats on a couple of occasions. He has such a good heart that retaliation has never crossed his mind, instead he waits for people to move the cats out of his way so he can get by without losing an eye.

Musket’s also a very honest dog. He will not lie to you, he will not dissemble, he lets you know who he is and what he needs to make his little world right. He’s frankly a joy, and that’s why I’ve loved him from afar for a while now. Unfortunately he’s also a dog who needs tow ork to be happy, and the Manor is not a good Working Dog home for the long haul. But so far Mr. Fluffybutt is enjoying his vacation, as you can see from the light in his eyes.

Blackthorn's Musket, a sable German Shedder with a wolfy, fluffy face and relatively small ears (compared to Zille) in three-quarters profile to the camera. His ears are up, his eyes are alight, and his tongue is out.

21 November, 2010

New residents, and an honored guest.

Another trip down to Blackthorn Kennel yesterday for Christine’s excellent company and our final two chickens! Very exciting. We also on the spur of the moment agreed to bring Musket home with us for a week. Musket is Zille’s younger half-brother, a fine hairy sable beastie who was in need of a vacation at the Manor to give his ginormous brain something to do. In fact, Daniel summed up the worky dog thing pretty well when he said “You know that light Zille gets in her eyes when she sees a ball? He has that all the time.” We’ve had one incident of minor bloodshed when Musket thought he might play a chasey game with Braxton Bragg, who beat him upside the head repeatedly. Everyone survived unscathed, the blood shed belongs to the dog who pretended not to notice but now runs the other way when he sees Brax.

The chickens are about six weeks old, so not laying age for another 3 months or so. One is a Welsummer, a Dutch breed, and she has been christened Bebelina. Welsummers lay fat dark-brown eggs. The other is an Ameraucana, a hybrid of some breed crossed with the Araucana, which is a rumpless chicken that lays greeny-blue eggs and is indigenous to Chile. She has been dubbed Ayinnanku, which is a Mapuche name meaning “favorite eagle.” The Mapuche are the indigenous people of Chile who were conquered and displaced by the Spanish, who called them the Araucana, from whence the breed of chicken gets its name. Look at that, history and poultry all in one tidy bundle! But yes, I did name my chicken “favorite eagle.” I am, after all, the same woman who named her Doberman “Tinkerbelle.”

Pictures of all this excitement will no doubt follow when it’s light outside, but for now you will have to imagine the fine hairy sable dog and the charming chickens. Bebelina is brown with yellowy neck feathers, Ayinnanku is mostly black with coppery neck feathers and spiffy ear tufts. Fingers crossed that Lorena and Matilda are gracious about sharing their digs. There still might be bantams in spring, but this is it for full-size hens.

19 November, 2010

Chickens: really enchanting.

After not quite a week with us, Matilda and Lorena have gotten the idea that the monkeyslaves bring food. When we visit their pen they no longer automatically hide behind their house, but instead approach us with hopeful and beseeching “bweeeeee? bweeeeeeeek?” noises. Today they ALMOST ate a brussels sprout from my hand. They wanted it but the monkeypaw was too much and so there was much chickeny muttering about the injustice of it all. Of course then when I put it down for them, they kicked leaves over it. Chickens.

The delivery of their crumbles was also the occasion for hopeful bweeking, and then for satisfied quiet mutterings. They like scratching for the crumbles, but when they run out of scratchable food they will go for the ones in the feeder. Theoretically the crumbles are a Complete Chicken Diet full of everything a hen needs to lay eggs, but screw that says I. So far they have enjoyed apples, cauliflower, parsnips, carrots, potatoes, and brussels sprouts, all in appropriate amounts. Matilda particularly liked the parsnips, whereas Lorena is a potato fiend.

Whereas Lorena was initially braver, Matilda is really coming out of her shell (HA! …get it?) and is now the more hopeful when she thinks the monkeys might have food. It’s really soothing to sit and watch them; this weekend I will try to get some video for you of chickens being chickens and doing chickeny things and making chickeny noises! Also this weekend we will be adding a Welsummer hen and possibly an Ameraucana as well. Welsummers are reliable layers of very dark brown eggs; Ameraucanas can lay greeny-blue ones. Matilda lays the skinny pale brown eggs we get now, Lorena has been verified as the producer of the rounder pale brown eggs.

Each egg is a minor miracle. We give Lorena and Matilda food and water and leaves to scratch through and perches to sit on and a warm cozy house, and in return they produce eggs, perfect and smooth. Also since we have five of them as of today, we are down to a mere $160 per egg. Woo!

18 November, 2010

There might be soap. Also, there was a reunion.

My apologies for the hiatus, gentle readers. We were plagued by rain, which takes down my primitive satellite internet connection. There are a lot of joys to living in the middle of nowhere, but “fast and reliable internet access” isn’t one of them.

Tuesday, however, was a monumental day! For one, I took my soap out of the molds and cut it, and now I am trying desperately to ignore its presence so that it can cure for six weeks or so. Behold!
Three paper plates sit on top of a cardboard box in the Closet of Wonders. On top of each paper plate are four chunky square bars of what is possibly soap. It is yellow and mostly sort of translucent except where it is a pale yellow opaque color.

I think it will function as soap when it’s done curing, so success!

And then Tuesday night I went down to the Fountain Bookstore in Richmond to see Cherie Priest do a reading and Q&A for her book Dreadnought, which was fantastic. Braxton Bragg is totally Cherie’s fault. She has also met and adored the Dobes, who adored her in return because she is like that. Alas, none of the Usual Suspects got to go with us, since I had no idea if the store was dog-friendly and Roo would have whined during the reading. Still, we had a happy reunion and a generally good time of things.

In other news, there were two eggs yesterday! Today there was only one egg. But still, that means we are at four edible eggs, two from each chicken, and so the cost of the eggs has dropped to $200 each. Oh and now that we are reasonably certain that the black chicken is an Australorp (I just like saying “Australorp”) which is an Australian variant of the trusty Orpington breed, the girls have names.

The Australorp is Matilda, as in Waltzing. The silver-laced Wyandotte is Lorena, after a Civil-War-era song popular amongst the soldiers, since the Wyandotte is a US breed that made its appearance right around the Civil War. We are looking at adding a Welsummer here shortly, and she will need a Dutch name. Suggestions gratefully accepted.

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