Monday, October 24, 2011

Just call me Noah...

'cause I swear I'm living in an ark. Last summer we had no animals, but since then we have adopted a turtle (but then we released Skipperdee when we realized he wasn't happy), a Beta fish named Bubba Blue, 2 mice named Peanut and Butter, and 2 kittens named Star and Night (though I realized a few days after they came home that Benedict and Scholastica would have been far better names). This past week the pet population was thinned dramatically. 

Poor Bubba, who survived 1 week-long move from Virginia to Maine in a Tupperware container, succumbed to over cleaning the tank. We have never dealt with a water softener and apparently soft water doesn't rinse out soap or bleach very well. With trace amounts of bleach left in the cleaned tank, the poor fish didn't have a chance. Then the 5 big kids and I went up to the farm for swimming lessons and returned on Saturday night to complete chaos. Apparently the kittens overturned the mice tank, released the mice and killed Peanut. Tim found Julia Ellen in the top bunk holding her lifeless body. He frantically searched for her sister, only to find that the baby had hidden Butter under the sheets so the kittens couldn't get her too. 

We are back up to our home's pet carrying capacity with a new red Bubba and a new white girl mouse named Cream (get it? Butter Cream) A new, secure habitat for the traumatized mice and a policy of keeping the girl's door shut will hopefully protect them from the rapidly growing kittens. We have discussed this summer growing chickens for the freezer and with butchering at approximately 8 weeks of age, I think I can make room on the ark for a short-term feathered flock.    

1 comment:

Foxfier said...

Smart baby!

I'm sure you have an idea what you're doing with the chickens, but I gotta give my two cents just in case:
1) there is nothing wrong with getting the male chicks of laying species, and
2) for the love of all that's holy, don't get the really cheap bunch of (something like) 125, even if it is just a few dollars more than (something like) 45 chicks. My mom made that mistake and all but TWO of the blanking things lived! My siblings and I loved it, we spent every weekend for a month at the hot springs (there was one just the right temp for plucking chickens... called "chicken pit" or something.) butchering chickens!