Oh NO!!
I wish you a speedy recovery. My daughter's family has been battling this. I have avoided them since Xmas. I love my grandkids but they are petri dishes full of disease!
Maybe you can use this to jot down all your one time "college adventures" you were going to share with us. I am thinking this would make a great movie if we can get Hollywood to sign on.
Now I have to admit something, I, the genius I am did something stupid yesterday...
We have nasty weather up here now, The thermometer said it was 10 degrees yesterday, a virtual heat wave. There was some wind and a new inch or so of light snow yesterday morning. I went out to collect eggs and open the chicken door yesterday morning.
I have a double door system on the coop for humans. I have a small grain storage area before entering the chicken area. The chickens bunch up by the human door watching me like little hawks until I open the human door then they rush through the human door and either go outside through the other human door or try to hide in the grain storage area. It is a daily game with them, I actually enjoy it, it gives me a chance to pick up the birds pet them and scoot them out the door.
Yesterday I left the second door into the chicken area open while collecting eggs and opening the chicken door. I had about a dozen chickens run into the grain area and then outside, except,,,,,,,
They bawked ( misspelling intentional ) at going outside, new snow!! HORROR!! They run around on snow all the time, it never bothers them, they have not seen the ground in 3 months but NEW SNOW! NO WAY are they going out. So I started scooting them out. I gently pushed them all outside.
I should have realized how dumb this was, but I can be oblivious to the obvious. rick was throwing such a fit when I locked him outside, I relented and let him back inside. Which meant picking him up and carrying him into the chicken area, of course this dissed him and he protested this too.
The chickens went to the south side of the coop out of the wind, I filled dog dish with black oil sunflower seeds and they started munching. Life seemed good.
Now I have to tell you one of my greatly trained hunting dogs is a pain in the back end area of my jeans. She has food issues. She never thinks she is getting enough food. She eats chicken food before and after recycling by the chickens. She will eat in the chicken feeders side by side with the chickens. I feed the chickens household scraps. Some of those craps are things we do not want the dog to eat, So yesterday I decided to try and keep the dog out of the chicken food/fence. I have a gate in the fence large enough to drive my bobcat through, it is about 10 feet wide. I have left it wide open for months. I decided to close it leaving only 6 inches open, in hopes the dog could not get inside. I failed twice.
The dog managed to get through the 6 inches. The chickens could not get through the 6 inches. How a 100 pound dog can get through 6 inches and a 4 pound chicken cannot is beyond me. when I went out to lock the coop last night it was dark and chilly. My wife and I were discussing the cold, I was trying to convince her was not all that cold out. Now it is time for me to make a confession, nothing as juicy as MM's college days but I do not like long pants on my legs, so I wear a one piece cardhart insulated coveralls when I go outside in the cold directly over my undies or long johns. I was in the house all day yesterday and had no long johns on. When it was time to go outside to lock up the chickens, I grabbed my coveralls and started to put them on. My wife then stopped me!
Then the witch, however witch was not the first word to come to my mind, dared me to go outside in my undies to prove to her it was not that cold. I had no choice, I was trapped. After 40 some years being married to her, I knew I could not let her win.
So out the door I went in my skivvies, into 10 below temps with 40 mph winds. I get to the coop and I see one hen behind the plywood leaning on the north side .I scooped her up and took her inside, I notice I am short chickens in the coop. I look outside the coop and see a dozen birds huddled against the south wall of the coop, too dumb to find the gate! So I the genius was out there in my skivvies freezing my gonads off, picking up chickens one at a time bringing them into the coop and setting them on a roost.
To make matters worse, when I set the last chicken into the coop, a chicken on the high roost decided to crap. Beings I was bent over, it hit my butt went down my leg and into my boot.....
I am hoping to learn to ignore my wife in another 40 years.
I hope the chickens are okay.
End of my sad saga.
