Nancys Dear Diary

Dear Diary 05302011

It is nowhere near Halloween, yet I got a fright on the 10th, early morning, I heard the birds in the back yard (my whites) making a large din. This is actually normal, so I ignored it. When I went down later, to feed them, I found nearly all were dead! They were strewn on the hillside and there were large prints the size of a German Shepard looking most-likely like a Bob Cat. I moved all of my surviving chickens up to the front yard in a separate cage from my red chicken flock, and took pictures of the paw prints.

When I was cleaning up the chickens, I got another fright when something seemed to be moving inside the wall of the coop. I cautiously walked by and gave it a poke. At first I thought it was one of my cats or maybe a rooster. I had to cut into the wall to get it out and found it was one of the chickens! She had been standing in a strange position so long that her foot was frozen closed. I worked the toes and found them to be unbroken. I put her in with her sisters in the front and gave them plenty of grain and fresh water. I went downstairs one more time to look for more survivors and found the large rooster that I had had with my red birds in the front yard. He had gone down to defend my white flock! I am nursing him back to health as the reds really miss him.

It is sad to lose so many birds. I immediately put their eggs into the incubator. I checked after a week and all but 2 of the 22 eggs had a beautiful live chick embryo inside. :) I can hardly wait for their hatching day.

I called a man about setting traps and such to catch the Bob Cat and he said from my description of the paw prints, it may be a Cougar!

I don't know what it was about the 10th but it was a bad day for me all around. Someone had told me that the day of the new moon was a good day to make wishes. My wish is that I will never again have a day so awful as that! The 10th started with my cats fighting, knocking down all of my stuff from the shelves. I spent the morning picking everything up. Then my computer crashed after making a burning smell. Hubby thinks it's the cpu. (So I'm writing this on Hubby's computer.) I don't remember everything that happened that day but my birds dying was the worst. I have said many a prayer over them since. It is hard listening to them ask out into the yard and not be able to let them out but I can't until that monster is caught.

Dear Diary 04202011
Warning: A little dark.
When we lose someone.

I was feeding my chickens today and found one of them dead. I picked her up and looked through her feathers for a wound and didn't see any. I put her down while I fed the flock and came back to find her eye open. I looked into her eye and asked, "What happened to you?" and she closed her eye. Then I noticed she was trembling. I held her for a very long time, then put her inside and tried to make her comfortable. It was hard leaving her but there was nothing else I could do. I cried for a while and got a hug from my Hubby and my cats. All I can figure is that she got up very high in the coop and fell or tried to fly up to the top perch and missed. My white chickens were always athletic. Their little progeny were flying around the 2nd week like canaries! I've decided that when I build their next coop, the perches and nests will be half as high so they cannot hurt themselves as badly.

I have had other weird chicken deaths happen. I had a disabled rock rooster living in the house and his healthy brother downstairs with the flock. One day I found the disabled one dead and the next day I found his healthy brother dead too. That wasn't the weirdest death though. I had two game roosters in big carriers. When I went to feed them, I heard the one continually pecking like he already had food. I fed the other one then opened the pecking roosters cage to feed him. I was watching him for his usual display but noticed he was lying down, very still. I couldn't understand why or how he was pecking when he was lying down. Then I realized he was dead. Immediately, the pecking stopped. So he was dead, but dreaming of his favorite thing, eating

Dear Diary 04102011

I finally wandered over to WikiLeaks and got a sinking feeling when two of their links gave me 404 pages. Other pages said I was being protected by being shunted through a transitional page. There were individual articles on different countries finding ways to ban WikiLeaks. It seems so strange "The News" is being looked upon, not as being reported but as mere "whistle blowers". Whatever happened to "The News" being "News"?

The US Government is Pushing Drugs to Children!!? =o Reading "The News", I see the US Government is in the business of promoting both Monsanto's untested GMO's and big Pharma's autism causing polluted vaccines. Crazy up on the hill, eh? Anybody who thinks we are being propagandized by the modern press just has to look up stories about the government's plan to push vaccines on children. The amount of vaccines now given to children before school age has risen from a mere three to over 50. If you have to ask why the cases of autism have risen in the youth, you need look no further than the vaccine data.

I wasn't alive when we had the first depression but I sure would rather hear the declaration, "A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage!" Than, "GMOs in every pot and no cars 'cause of 'global warming'."

I'd write more on the subject but my cat is insisting I go to bed. Something about, I'm comfortable to sleep on or something. Maybe I'll dream it's the 50's and Dad finally got me that pony I always wanted.

Along these lines, just for fun, go over and create your own for-real diseases!! Using the great Disease Mongering Engine. You can invent diseases Too!

http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-mongering-engine.asp

Dear Diary 04042011
Well, I survived April Fool's day. It really was an eventful day, though. Funny thing is, I don't remember much of it. I remember schlogging around in the mud for some reason and finding a chicken in the front yard. Oh yeah! Now I remember.

I heard something crash in the front room but I was busy working on some project and figured, "Hubby will tell me if something is wrong." So I kept working, though I kept hearing the chickens in the brooder going crazy. I eventually got up and found the 2 chickens I put in the smaller brooder (to make it roomier for the others in the main one) were *Gone!* I went and told Hubby and he helped me look for the lost chicks. After looking for a while I told him. "It's too late. The cats must o' gotten them." He suddenly shouted, (Well, Hubby doesn't ever shout, he just sorta raises his voice a little and everybody pays attention.) "They're back here!" At first I couldn't see what he was talking about. I looked around him and saw nothing but floor. Then he said again, "They're back here!"and pointed behind the big cage I have for the older chicks, waiting for the warmer weather of spring. (Will there ever be a spring!!??) "They're eating."

I looked behind the big cage and sure enough, the two little hens (About the size of pigeons.) were snarfing up bits of grain that the older chicks had spilled. I smiled. "Well let's get them back in their brooder before the cats get them."

He got the broom and stuck it in the back so they would run to me and I could catch them. Only thing is, they weren't afraid of the broom. lol Long story short, together we caught the two wayward chicks and gave them dinner. The two chicks weren't hungry though, with gullets full of stolen grain. :D

This photo reminds me of the time I spent in New York. It was the end of August in 1976. I had just divorced my husband of 4 and a half years and was a victim of downsizing at my company so I ran off to New York to take a look! I remember when I went through the fun house at Coney Island there was a swinging dummy to scare us. I remember commenting to my boyfriend Sandy that that was no dummy. 3 years later they discovered it was one of those old Wild West gunmen, Jessy James or somebody famous that they had hung up. In the process of swinging back and forth he hit someone who grabbed and tore off his arm. When they saw the bone sticking out. Looked for the story but couldn't find it. Google, you have let me down again. :(

Long story short. Had a great time until I ran out of money. Banks required 2 weeks to cash my unemployment check and unemployment in California refused to send me checks in New York. So, I worked for the money but can only get it if I'm looking for work in CA??? That sucks! Good bye New York. Hope you are well and sassy as always. Now I'm rusting away in Washington State. ;)