The Grumpiness Factor

I've been even grumpier than usual lately -- I've been sick and the office manager has been on vacation, so I've had to answer the phone every day, all day. I feel like I have a head full of porridge still, but my voice is back. It's fun to croak out, "Caregivers, can I help you?" when someone calls, as in "I'm at death's door, but I can help you with your home health needs. Just let me come over for a few minutes and hang out and in a few days Grandma won't need us anymore."

Also, it's raining. It's June. We never have rain in June. Usually it quits in April, early May at the latest. Eveyone forgets from year to year, though, and there are many discussions about this everywhere I go. Rain in June here on the Coast would be like snow in June other places. Rain is a winter thing here. Time for it to stop.

I was glad not to have to water the yard tho, and, actually, the landscape is incredibly beautiful in the mist. The cypresses that lean inland away from the sea breeze have lost their tops in the fog, and the fields near my house have a silvery-dewy look.

The young chickens don't seem to care about getting wet, and were foraging merrily when I left, stopping to shake themselves every few seconds. Negrita looked the worst, her little ostrich plumes drooping down sadly. We've determined that Baby Huey is a rooster. We took him and a Brahma hen from Frank's mother's flock and gave her LaVerne, the brown Americana, and LaVerne's best friend, another Brahma.

Huey's first public relations move after he was dropped into the new flock was to attack every single hen, and he was pecked back without remorse. Even tiny Negrita flew up at him, to his utter surprise. When it got dark everyone but Huey went inside the coop, and he sat in the pen cheeping miserably. "Betcha wish you'd been nicer to all these girls," I couldn't resist telling him. We've instituted an intensive taming program for him now. Clipping his wing was the first step, and now we catch him regularly and carry him around the house and pet his comb a lot. (Their combs and wattles are the most sensitive parts of their bodies.) We are trying to keep him from becoming the kind of rooster that terrorizes small children and pecks cats' eyes out. Time will tell.


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