We got 2 inches in about half an hour, and our entire 48'x48' shop flooded, including the chicken coop in it. The outside covered coop got flooded too, the first time it's every gotten wet. My poor chickens had nowhere to go but huddle on the roost, scared, while my husband and I broomed water and wet sand and vacuumed the flood out and set up big fans. It was 4:30 pm already, but my 17-week Sapphire Gem dropped her first egg from the roost into the flood/mud waters of the pen...
Then when I jumped in the 4WD pickup to try the 3 miles of dirt road to go get straw (my pile of sand was outside and soaked), I almost floated and ended up stranded on a tiny high spot of the dirt road with dangerous flood waters swirling past swiftly on both side and nothing but a lake in front of me. We've had numerous people die in these parts trying to go through deep water around here and getting washed out into the field, trapped to drown in their cars. So I just sat while the feed store closed and waited.
The water didn't go down, so I inched back and did a very precarious 15-point turn around, then rolled all the windows down (windows that won't open are how people drown), put the pedal to the metal through the lake that was my road, lost my bumper to the current, engine almost sputtered out, but made it home, covered in the splashed mud!
This morning after I let them out to free range at sunrise, I cleaned and bleached the cement floor of their inside coop, repainted walls and roosts, and spread new sand (we had spread wet sand from the pile to dry overnight under a big fan). All nice and clean and dry.
I wonder, do they ever know we're the ones who do all this work to make their lives peachy?
Enjoying the new Big Ben mug.
