It's official. I am certified and lisensed chicken/crazy/psyco.
We picked up my cages. I found these on craigslist. I didn't need them but thought, "oh, wouldn't it be nice...." Talked to Checoukan on the phone and showed them to her on craislist. I couldn't justify getting them with a move coming up sometime in the next year. Checoukan said, "Just think of how much stuff you could pack in there to move..." It's your fault, Rosie. You are an enabler!
Anyway, they are big... 8feet long and 6 feet high and there are two units of 6 cages each for a total of 12 pens. Nice large size. I knew they were big. Okay... we took a trailer to haul them. I did NOT think about how HEAVY they would be! The only people there to load them were me, the seller's daughter, who had recently had a C-section about the same time I had my bones replaced with titanium, and my DH, who not that long ago had some magic slinky thing put in his main coronary artery to keep it from plugging up with sewage.
So if we had just taken a few minutes to study the situation we could have made it a lot easier on ourselves. I love my DH to pieces. He goes along with my crazy, impulsive, whimsical ideas without complaint, but he IS a bull in a china closet some times. He immediately starts muscling this thing around to get the first one on the trailer. We managed to get it tipped up on its end on the trailer. A second or two after the thing is up on the trailer (I have no idea how many hundred pounds!) one of the steel gates came crashing down and hit me right on the head and then banged into my back. I was seeing stars and my ears were ringing. It's a wonder it didn't knock me right down on the ground. I politly excused myself from the activities for a few minutes. You know, I almost never hurt myself. I take time to look things over and am pretty careful with a good deal of common sense. Trouble is, some of that common sense just doesn't come to the front when you are on pain medicine. Drugs put common sense in the compost pile of the cranium.
After the head banging we realized it would be VERY simple to just remove all of the doors and a good deal of the plywood. Heck, it wouldn't have been very difficult at all to just disassemble the whole thing. A few bolts was all that held the thing together. We got the second one loaded with much less "headache" and then realized the whole thing was probably too tall to make it back out the barn door. We managed to squeak it out with 1/2 inch clearance.
The trip home wasn't the most comfortable. The thing was wobbling with every gust of wind and bump in the road. We ended up stopping at Orscheln's in Louisburg, KS (Nice place!) to get some extra bolts that were missing and some extra rope to secure it. It was pretty solid then and we were able to sail home with a tailwind most of the way.
After beaning my noodle with a steel gate my ears were ringing the whole way home. I guess there's more than one way to make yourself "dingy."
Here's the monsters, still on the trailer and probably NOT going to be unloaded tonight.
In this picture they are sitting on their ends. All the gates are removed and most of the plywood flooring is off and staked in between the two units. When they stand up on their wheels they are just over 6 feet high and 8 feet long each. There are two levels of pens, so when upright the floor level of the top one is just over 3 feet high, which is a really nice height to work.
We picked up my cages. I found these on craigslist. I didn't need them but thought, "oh, wouldn't it be nice...." Talked to Checoukan on the phone and showed them to her on craislist. I couldn't justify getting them with a move coming up sometime in the next year. Checoukan said, "Just think of how much stuff you could pack in there to move..." It's your fault, Rosie. You are an enabler!
Anyway, they are big... 8feet long and 6 feet high and there are two units of 6 cages each for a total of 12 pens. Nice large size. I knew they were big. Okay... we took a trailer to haul them. I did NOT think about how HEAVY they would be! The only people there to load them were me, the seller's daughter, who had recently had a C-section about the same time I had my bones replaced with titanium, and my DH, who not that long ago had some magic slinky thing put in his main coronary artery to keep it from plugging up with sewage.
So if we had just taken a few minutes to study the situation we could have made it a lot easier on ourselves. I love my DH to pieces. He goes along with my crazy, impulsive, whimsical ideas without complaint, but he IS a bull in a china closet some times. He immediately starts muscling this thing around to get the first one on the trailer. We managed to get it tipped up on its end on the trailer. A second or two after the thing is up on the trailer (I have no idea how many hundred pounds!) one of the steel gates came crashing down and hit me right on the head and then banged into my back. I was seeing stars and my ears were ringing. It's a wonder it didn't knock me right down on the ground. I politly excused myself from the activities for a few minutes. You know, I almost never hurt myself. I take time to look things over and am pretty careful with a good deal of common sense. Trouble is, some of that common sense just doesn't come to the front when you are on pain medicine. Drugs put common sense in the compost pile of the cranium.
After the head banging we realized it would be VERY simple to just remove all of the doors and a good deal of the plywood. Heck, it wouldn't have been very difficult at all to just disassemble the whole thing. A few bolts was all that held the thing together. We got the second one loaded with much less "headache" and then realized the whole thing was probably too tall to make it back out the barn door. We managed to squeak it out with 1/2 inch clearance.
The trip home wasn't the most comfortable. The thing was wobbling with every gust of wind and bump in the road. We ended up stopping at Orscheln's in Louisburg, KS (Nice place!) to get some extra bolts that were missing and some extra rope to secure it. It was pretty solid then and we were able to sail home with a tailwind most of the way.
After beaning my noodle with a steel gate my ears were ringing the whole way home. I guess there's more than one way to make yourself "dingy."
Here's the monsters, still on the trailer and probably NOT going to be unloaded tonight.
In this picture they are sitting on their ends. All the gates are removed and most of the plywood flooring is off and staked in between the two units. When they stand up on their wheels they are just over 6 feet high and 8 feet long each. There are two levels of pens, so when upright the floor level of the top one is just over 3 feet high, which is a really nice height to work.
