The Old Folks Home

[Alaskan]

See that's the thing. You have to keep all the stuff organized so they have it, otherwise they will do it wrong. And then you have to check to make sure they DIDN'T do it wrong. So just what are you paying them to do? (Besides make the mistake *I* made )

That is how I see it.

Organizing and finding everything is the biggest headache.

Once that is done.... well, most of the work is done.

 

[Cynthia12]

BTW, Good Morning. Still can't get out of the house. Stomach virus is the worst I've had in my life, being glued to the loo is not fun.

I know the feeling. Been through cdiff this year. I'm still battling. Doc says can be months before my bowels get back to normal. In the meantime..good ol Imodium. Sorry..tmi. Thinking us old folks have been there done that a few times anyway.

 

[Cynthia12]

Don't feel bad about it. I'm normally in excellent health which leaves me basically speechless when other's are ill. The stroke this year was an odd occurrence, and when I contacted the nurse at the VA this morning asking if anyone else reported intestinal problems she said only a couple of cases of food poisoning. I was told to go to Urgent Care nearby if it lasts much longer, butt, it seems to be easing off now.

It is one of the symptoms of........ Covid. .

 

[Cynthia12]

That is how I see it.

Organizing and finding everything is the biggest headache.

Once that is done.... well, most of the work is done.

This will be my first year doing this. Husband usually did...son did it for him last year. He says he'll do it for me this year. . Now, papers...let's see. I'm thinking I'll just use what they send me in the mail? There's a lot going on for this year with his passing. I'm pretty sure I will owe quite a bit.

 

[Cynthia12]

Interesting news here! Kids got their results back. Remember, they both had two tests. The first was the quick.. Austin's came back positive. Bronwyn's negative. Their saliva tests...same thing! Thought for sure she would have it. She's got a cold. She had the Moderna, he had the J&J. I tried to get him to get the booster. He said he wasn't worried about it. Well now he's really upset about his smell and taste being gone. Two others in the family had that, still aren't back to normal after one being a year, the other only a month. I am still ok.. Had the Moderna. I definitely have something going on now. Not bad. Clearing my throat and coughing a bit. I went to get tested yesterday. If it's negative, guess I've got what my daught in law has. Weird.

 

[silverhair67]

@

CSolis how ya feeling??​

 

[Beer can]

Trick or treat! Happy Halloween!

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Followed a group with a guy trick or treating with a bunch of kids with a really large jack o'lantern pumpkin on his head/shoulders actually it was big. Told DW I bet he regrets that idea. Wasn't much later he kept taking it off and carrying it

 

[Beer can]

I think I read about it in an article talking about free ranging. The better the bird can blend in, the safer it is from airborne predators. A white chicken will stand out against grass for a hawk. While a darker or mottle brown and black bird will blend in with shadows. Which if you think about it, may be true.

Are ground predators more likely to be sight predators? I know some are attracted by scent but if they are sight predators would they be more attracted to movement and therefore color not matter?

I've heard a few on here with mixed colored flocks mention white chickens are targeted by aerial predators less often than colored chickens with the thought of hawks etc are more likely to target birds that look like their natural prey.
My thought is predators have pretty darn good eyesight, can pick a mouse out of a field hundreds of yards away, ain't no 'camouflage' chicken going to fool them.

 

[Beer can]

Just read this laughed till I cried


"DEER HUNTERS.

(A letter from someone who wants to remain anonymous, who farms, writes well and actually tried this)

I had this idea that I could rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up-- 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold.

The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it, it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope, and then received an education. The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope.

That deer EXPLODED. The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer-- no Chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.

A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.

I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in. I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand...kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when ..... I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and slide off to then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head--almost like a big dog. They bite HARD and it hurts.

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective.

It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now), tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.

That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.

Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp... I learned a long time ago that, when an animal -like a horse --strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.

This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy. I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head.

I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away. So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope......to sort of even the odds!!

All these events are true so help me God...An Educated Farmer"

 

[Alaskan]

Followed a group with a guy trick or treating with a bunch of kids with a really large jack o'lantern pumpkin on his head/shoulders actually it was big. Told DW I bet he regrets that idea. Wasn't much later he kept taking it off and carrying it

One of my kids tried that one year... yeah... heavy.