Opa's place -Where an old rooster visits with friends - Page 507

Chickenstock turned out to be a great time and over 170 souls attended making it the largest yet. I thoroughly enjoyed Raz's visit on his way home.  It just topped off a great day.

Friday one of my cousins called to inform me that her father had passed.  He was 89 and was one of my favorite uncles.  He served in the Marines during WWII and fought in most of the major campaigns.  He was highly decorated but rarely talked about it.  Last year his VFW post in cooperation with the VA took him and several others to Washington to see the WWII memorial.  He came back deeply touched by the experience.  I visited with him shortly after and we talked about his experiences for several hours.

For the last several years I have always stayed with him and my aunt for a couple of days each time I went south.  I sure am glad that I did.  His passing brought to mind a General Patton quote ""It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."

The heat has been close to unbearable and the drought continues.  Late yesterday the sky darken but the clouds continued on without letting go of a single drop of rain.  The upside is that the grass growth rate has slowed to the point that it doesn't need to be cut, however, the weed growth rate continues unabated and they need to be cut.
 

In year past we have always gone to a small town a few miles north of us for their annual 4th of July parade.  The parade isn't much but it is something to do and afterwards the church that Dave and Amy attend has a hog roast.  With the temperature going above 100 today I figured that staying home in the air conditioning.  Hope everyone is staying cool and enjoying the holiday.

Heat finally broke and doing things outside is a little easier.  Yesterday I forgot to hook the lead wire up to the portable electric poultry fence and it appears that a coon tried to get in.  The plastic cord with the wire carrier was broken in one spot so I had to fix that and then fill a hole next to my A-frame coop when on tried to dig in.  Needless to say the coon traps have been set again.  While the traps are set and baited I still need to go out and place some white Styrofoam cups over them. The bottom is cut out so they still can access the trap and white serves as a visual attractant.

A fellow retired fire fighter lives a couple of miles down the road from me and he and his wife recently decided to adopt a 10 year old boy.  The poor kid had been shuffled from pillar to post for a few years and no one wanted to adopt him because of his age.  He seems like a pretty decent kid and is adjusting to the new environment quite well.  Mike decided that it might be a good learning experience for the boy to be responsible for helping to raise some quail.  Each day they roll the cages outside and at night roll them back into the garage.  With the 100+ temperature we had they decided to leave the overhead garage door open about a foot to lessen the heat inside.  The next morning the poor kid goes out to roll his birds out and discovered that they had been visited by some coons.  My friend Mike said it wasn't quite the lesson he was hoping to provide.