Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[Kris5902]

Mass Extinction

If all goes as planned, a meteor has just struck the Yucatan peninsula of Le Rat's world.

As always, I had an audience.
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The master entry was uncovered and all others were plugged.

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Cardboard was put in place to protect the vinyl shed and 5 lbs of dry ice meteor deployed.
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The dry ice was covered up. Nowhere but down for the CO2 to go.
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Bye bye Le Rat and your little rat friends. I am sorry to have met you.

It looks like Victory is at last yours Bob! Congratulations... and goodbye Le Rat and family.

 

[BY Bob]

I'm not having any of this Bob. You are either having a bad day or the Covid fear is taking hold. The former will pass but the latter you must guard against.
A few people I know were feeling the same dread of the coming winter probably accompanied by more stringent confinement conditions, especially some of the people I know in the UK.
There is a partial solution Bob and that is to break the rules.
A hypothetical situation.
I can be fairly certain that some of my friends are less likely to catch Covid than others as can most people if they put some thought in to it.
Every time I go shopping for example my chances of contract the virus are relatively high; even with the precautions like a proper mask, hand cleansers and doing my best to keep away from other shoppers. In the small local shops, the risk is low, but in the supermarkets and moving through people in towns and travelling on any form of public transport, the risk is a lot higher.
We (people) make risk assessments all our lives. If one takes reasonable precautions, the risk of catching Covid is lower than the risk of haviing a vehicle accident relative to risk exposure. Things like this have been forgotton in the hysteria.
The next important point is not everyone who catches Covid dies. In fact, it seems from research that a high proportion of people do not even know they are carrying the virus.
I could go on but you are quite capable of working out your own risk assessment with the knowledge you have.
Some people I know are having a social life but it happens at their homes. They and a very small group of friends have arranged between thenselves a night a week when they meet and have supper, or something.
I would quite happily sit down for dinner with my eldest daughter and her husband because I know the degree of caution they have. I would not sit down to dinner with the people in the main house here because they are completely irresponsible.
For people who find the lack of human contact a burdon my view is it is better to take a calculated risk and stay sane and reasonably happy with something to look forward to, than to take isolation for fear of a probably small chance of becoming seriouusly ill with Covid to an extreme.

Thank you Shad. You are not wrong. It is interesting that my life has caused me to form close friendships with people who live no where near me. I have always considered this one of the great things about the age in which I live. We keep in touch but we no longer meet in person. Understand I have been impacted on two fronts, my job has gone from loss of person to person interaction to none. I have gone from traveling 3 nights a week to none. Frankly I wasn't sure that Mrs BY Bob would be able to handle me in her business day after day.

Just thinking about my job, imagine how wonderful it was for me to spend 3 days in sunny warm Florida in winter or the see the beauty of the Idaho Rocky Mountains in summer.

What I have been doing is allowing myself to stay home. I have never had to organize my life before in order to just leave the house. I let myself fall into an awful pattern but I have recognized that was what I was doing.

I clearly came across as in dire straights based upon all of the responses I am receiving and I am so grateful to you all for your concern. It is truly wonderful to know that you are all worried about me.

What I was trying to say is that even I have been affected. I am making concious decisions to keep that from happening in the future. Like your network of trustworthy people, this is how you have adapted, I am applying myself to developing solutions that will keep me from having issues. Lucky for me so many of you have offered excellent suggestions. I am grateful to you all.

I understand the risks of Covid very well. I do believe I am managing my risk well. While I do not let Covid prevent me from doing things, I am smart about it.

 

[BY Bob]

I don't know, she apparently returned to the farm. He's living life on the run!!

Maybe she threw him out!

 

[BY Bob]

Thank you Shad. You are not wrong. It is interesting that my life has caused me to form close friendships with people who live no where near me. I have always considered this one of the great things about the age in which I live. We keep in touch but we no longer meet in person. Understand I have been impacted on two fronts, my job has gone from loss of person to person interaction to none. I have gone from traveling 3 nights a week to none. Frankly I wasn't sure that Mrs BY Bob would be able to handle me in her business day after day.

Just thinking about my job, imagine how wonderful it was for me to spend 3 days in sunny warm Florida in winter or the see the beauty of the Idaho Rocky Mountains in summer.

What I have been doing is allowing myself to stay home. I have never had to organize my life before in order to just leave the house. I let myself fall into an awful pattern but I have recognized that was what I was doing.

I clearly came across as in dire straights based upon all of the responses I am receiving and I am so grateful to you all for your concern. It is truly wonderful to know that you are all worried about me.

What I was trying to say is that even I have been affected. I am making concious decisions to keep that from happening in the future. Like your network of trustworthy people, this is how you have adapted, I am applying myself to developing solutions that will keep me from having issues. Lucky for me so many of you have offered excellent suggestions. I am grateful to you all.

I understand the risks of Covid very well. I do believe I am managing my risk well. While I do not let Covid prevent me from doing things, I am smart about it.

This post requires a chicken tax. Sorry I forgot.

 

[BY Bob]

Now there's a surprise.

They still aren't. Just saying.

 

[BY Bob]

Steak every day! How boring

Oh no I basically think it was hilarious, at least now, and that's why I told the story....I should have put in some goofy emojis....I am laughing at myself for being so obviously stupid with everything I did (is there a "doh!" emojji?), but the chickens are resilient, no lasting harm done, and I'm sure they haven't given it another thought.

Today their challenge was whether they would walk 24 inches over thin but packed wet icy snow to get to some scratch on it that they usually go insane for. It was sunny, not much breeze, and almost 40 F, what's not a chicken to like about that? The icy wet snow of course...They moaned this hoarse "wanting" sound, and I called them and encouraged them, but only one would come out.

While she pecked away at her reward I brought a handful over to the others perched on the door jamb watching. Gave them a few pecks and then held my hand just out of reach, and tried to get them to step away from their nice soft dry leaves and pine needles and chips. No luck. It is positively a spa in there compared to outside some days and I hardly blame them.....They stretched forward as far as they could without tipping off, almost tipped off but caught themselves and would not step on to it. One decided it was hopeless and not worth it and walked away. But then came back, still dubious. The other two kept trying to balance and stretch out. Then I went back to the first hen and tidbitted with the bits of scratch on the snow, she taking bits from my hand in between pecking around on the ground. Still no luck with the others.

A little breeze came up and the first hen decided the run was a much better place, and ran inside. I gathered the bits of scratch left, brought it inside onto the leaves and eventually laid out their afternoon scratch bar (the log) which they all happily went after. All's well that ends well. Also, all things come to those who wait?

I do this with my ladies everytime snow covers the ground. But I will not give it to them if they do not come out onto the snow,. Lilly knows this and just ignores me now. Lilly doesn't do snow.

 

[BY Bob]

Some people I know of just wont go out at all and haven't been out for months.
I don't want to make light of the virus; it's a very unpleasant bug.
I don't want to be indentified with the nutters and conspiracy theorist either.
Somewhere there is a middle rational path.

The rational path is usually in the middle.

 

[BY Bob]

What if,
(just what if) those rats have little breathing gear, and extra warm jackets? I' will shut up now!

Then we will try again and again until we catch them to far from their gear. No give up here.

 

[BY Bob]

Story time!!!

I worked in Urology, we would get medication shipped and packaged with dry ice. We usually would dump the dry ice in the "dirty" sink (used to clean instruments and such) to melt away. One day the lab tech wasn't looking and dumped about 300ml of saline in the sink over the dry ice. Of course it steamed up and she panicked, and ran hot water thinking it would melt. It did not. All the pipes were frozen and the room(closet) was just full of vapor. I had to go in and pull out as much as I could using a pail and dumped it outside. Needless to say we had a "protocol" put into place on the proper disposal of dry ice after that.

Now my story.

Back when I worked in the blood bank we would get deliveries of fresh frozen plasma packed in dry ice. Whenever we did, we would put the dry ice in the sink, run a little water and create a layer of smoke about 2 feet deep in the blood bank. Every time a nurse would come down for blood they would open the door and smoke would pour out scaring them. Many squeals were heard. It was always fun to startle a nurse.

 

[BY Bob]

It looks like Victory is at last yours Bob! Congratulations... and goodbye Le Rat and family.

Let us hope so.