farm life

Although my job is looking after kids, this past week it changed to looking after animals. The girls were off to their grandma's house, the parents were off on a hunting trip, and I was here, holding down the fort. As I mentioned on a previous post, there are some animals that surround me, not lots, but some.

DOGS: I was supposed to look after three (Pixie, Faye and Ariel) of the four dogs (Jag was put in a kennel for the week)....but he was promptly returned by a lady about 16 hours later. She informed me that in all those hours he never once shut up. He hauled from the moment he got there until the moment he left. I guess all he wanted was to come back to his buddies, because once here, he completely behaved. The dogs (all dogs in general) are, in my opinion, high maintenance. Now I don't really mind this, because I love dogs, but...1. it rained a lot this week, 2. these dogs play in dirt all day, 3. these dogs (Scottish deerhounds) like to chase and lick you and lean and jump on you...in conclusion, I was covered in mud for most of the week. These dogs eat meat, and for daily feedings I just had to power through and not think about the slice of cow I was handling, because if I thought about it too much, the dogs would've gone hungry all week.

CHICKENS/HENS/ROOSTERS: The yet-to-be-counted amount of chickens/hens/roosters were my least favorite. This is because if you know me at all, you know that I hate creatures that flap their wings uncontrollably. These guys love to flap their wings uncontrollably. It's like they do it just for me. Daily I'd go visit them and give them maize and pellets of some sort and refill their water, and daily they'd chase me all around and freak me out just for their amusement. I got no instructions on egg-collecting, but thought I should probably do it. Now I know nothing about eggs and how long they take to turn into feathery things, but I have this irrational fear that one day I'll crack an egg and a chick will land on my pan. After researching a bit (what was life before internet, google and wikipedia?)I learned it takes about 4 weeks (5?) for an egg to hatch....so no worries there. From that day on I collected eggs everyday and got chased and screamed at by the respective mother. In total I probably collected around 40, and I only dropped two...which is pretty impressive considering I always forgot to take cartons and was always running for my life.

GOLDFISH: These guys are pretty chill. There's four of them that live in a murky pond down by the entrance. All they needed was flakes to eat every day. They supposedly have no names, but I've decided they are Paul, John, George and Ringo. There's really no way to tell them apart so they just take turns wearing their Beatle names. Now, there used to be five fishies, but a while ago one of the dogs (or was it a cat?) got a hold of one and that was the end of her. It's a she because I named her Yoko. A lot of the times the dogs would come with me to feed the animals and most of the times they'd get in the pond and drink some of the water, and every single time I was certain I would be losing one of my Beatles. Is it wrong that I was more worried about deciding which Beatle would be killed off than about the actual fish? Thankfully, no fish were harmed under my care and the Fab Four continue to swim around and live their seemingly dull lives.

GUINEA PIG: This guy's name is Coffee and he's usually hiding whenever I went to visit, so I rarely see him. Coffee lives in a chicken coop and has a PVC pipe to hide in. The coop doesn't have a bottom so he can eat the grass. If he had eaten all the grass, I'd just move the coop to a new spot. He also has pellets he never eats and water he never drinks. He does like apples, so every other day I'd take one down for him. Again no instructions were given on the amount of apples I could give him, but I figured he's pretty fat already so it'd be fine. Actually he's a big ball with lots of hair, so he might not really be that fat, but I think it doesn't really matter.

CATS: Cinda and Chrissy...have no idea where they are. Chrissy set off on a "hunting trip" about three weeks ago and hasn't been spotted since. And Cinda has been MIA for about a week. Apparently they do this all the time, but it's a bit odd for me. Feeding them was a nonissue.

And that is that.

Peace out.

PS: Needless to say, no animals were harmed/starved/died on my watch.