ICU

Ok, don't worry, not the real ICU. Scooter got lasiks on Tuesday. We might as well spend that lovely HSA money my work gives me. Anyway, they gave him these marvelous eye shields that he has to tape on every night to keep him from bumping his eyes. Also, about eight months ago he got placed on a cpap machine. So for the last several nights, we tape on his eye shields, then he puts on this weird brace to keep his mouth closed while he sleeps, then the little cpap headgear that also goes around his head and little tubes up his nose (he doesn't wear the regular mask). He looks like he has been in some horrible accident and he should be in ICU hooked up to ao bunch of machines, it is so funny, I giggle every time! I would post a pic, but he doesn't see the humor like I do. It's a good thing he had those years of practice sleeping in a gas mask!

Oh Baby!

This morning I was rolling out of bed around 7:00, when Scott said, "What are you doing".  My response, "Going to check on the babies" "UGH" was the return.

I'm not really sure how that happened, it started so innocently. I went into Murdoch's and there were the little baby chicks.  OK, I was down to 10 hens so additional chicks were understandable.  Maybe 20 was a bit much. At least they are a few weeks old now and able to wander around the goat pasture.

My sister Donna called me few months ago about raising her some peacocks (something about a reptile rescue and poisonous snakes deciding if they ever get free to go directly to her house). Well, have you ever tried to find peacock chicks?  Not to mention the price...so it was suggested that guinea fowl are just as effective at attacking snakes.  I picked up 1/2 dozen.  They are going to be relocated as soon as they are big enough to not be a hawk's lunch.

 After losing Shadrach we realized that two goats does not a herd make. So we attempted to adopt an older goat named Snickers.  That didn't work very well, considering she bit me and threw Diva around like a rag doll. So we took her home because you can take the goat out of Clifton, but apparently you can't take Clifton out of the goat.  On the way home we found Meshach and Abed-nego in Whitewater. 

They are so tiny.

They also have super floppy ears.

 My sister Nancy is crazy about Pigs.  She has pigs all over her house...ceramic, metal, calendar...every gift giving holiday I have told her I would get her a pig.  She assured me many times that would be awesome, so this Mother's Day I went up Whitewater Creek and found....

 Lola. 

Nancy named her, she was so surprised.  I gave her a book about pig care, she opened it and said, "Very funny, where's my pig?"  You should have seen the look on her face when I said, "Right outside"

 There is a small problem.  For many years Nancy has bought Frank and Princess smoked pig's ears.  Unfortunately, Frank has trouble realizing that Lola's are not for chewing on.  Apparently they smell the same, Lola however, believes that turnabout is fair play, so every time Frank goes for her ears...she goes for his. 

Lola is living in our kennel, and may be getting a friend soon.  In the meantime Scott is working on a pig palace for her, complete with a pig pond.  I assured him she didn't need water slide...but maybe...

She is pretty cute, I'm not sure what Nancy will do with her, maybe have a 400 lb pig on a leash or Christmas Dinner!

In the meantime, this is kind of what our walks look like...

Scott's a good sport.

I'm really not sure where all these babies came from...but like alot of babies they kind of just happened...

By the way, you know your husband of 21 years loves you if he is willing to shampoo pig poop out of the carpet in the back of your mini van.

Thank a Teacher

Apparently I missed Teacher Appreciation week.  I saw a couple posts on Facebook about it, and a couple of the marquee's outside the schools around town touted "Thank A Teacher" on them.  It didn't really hit me until today when I was on my way to WaterFest.  Today and tomorrow I get the chance to share with 5th graders (for the 12th year) what it is that I do everyday.

Growing up I had some great teachers and some awful teachers. Included in that group are some great school teachers and some terrible school teachers. Now that I am older some of the teachers I thought were great when I was younger...I now realize they were pretty weird. But, again, I digress. 

Anyway, when I was in 10th grade I had Mr. Larson for Biology.  I'll admit I was pretty confused the first week or two, because he didn't teach us biology. No, Mr. Larson spent the first couple weeks teaching us how to be in high school. He taught us how to take notes, how to write a proper outline, and the importance of re-writing notes.  It sounds pretty simple, until you realize that all the teachers I had previously had, believed that the process of taking notes was some how absorbed and known by all their students. Along those lines, he also taught us the value of organizing school work and using reminders, calenders, and three ring binders (I know pretty common sense...except that common isn't so very common). I don't know how I would have ever survived college biology (especially taxonomy classes) without those note taking skills.

After going over all that he got down to teaching us biology.  And boy did he teach it.  I remember him dividing the chalk board in half and going down one side with creationist views and the other with evolutionary theory. I remember during the chapter on reproduction he was honest and warned about keeping a condom in your wallet for years before using it! He showed me how to scramble a frogs' brain and dissect it while it was still alive (since I was the only one who brought in an actual leopard frog). And even though only half the brain got scrambled and the next day while I was getting it out of the refrigerator it jumped up and tried to jump off the table (with entrails falling out of it), I thought he was going to laugh so hard he would hurt himself. I can still name almost all the bones in the human body and I discovered that my blood type was B+ in his class.

When it came time to pick a major the only one that seemed even remotely interesting was biology, because of the great class I had in 10th grade. Now I graduated from high school over 25 years ago, and college almost 21 years ago, but I can still remember where I sat in Mr. Larson's biology class.  Pete Larson was killed a couple years after he retired in an ATV accident while working for the US Forest Service. But, once a year at WaterFest I get to stand in front of a classroom of students and show them some cool things that I get to do as a job.  Lot's of times I have a teacher come up and thank me, tell me I did a great job and "have you ever thought about being a teacher?", I just think to myself, "Thank you Mr. Larson, you made it fun".

Sadness

I came home last week and found my Shadrach (the beloved) wasn't feeling very well.  On Friday, he wasn't any better so we had a housecall from the vet.  He determined that it was bladder stones (apparently not uncommon in cut male goats, particularly if their Mom's give them all the sweet mix they want).  Shadrach seemed to do better on Saturday, but took a turn for the worse on Saturday night.  On Monday we ended up with an ultrasound and the sad decision to put him down.

Shadrach was my very first goat and he made me love goats.  He was extremely needy when we first got him, very nervous and constantly cried.  He lived with the chickens until his pasture got fenced in and we got him a couple friends.  Even after that, whenever I got home he would recognize my vehicle and started crying for me to come play with him. When we would be out going to visit or working in the yard he never let me out of his sight, and if I were distracted long enough he would come over and bump me, as if to say "I'm right here in case you forgot". If we were up visiting Grandma and I hadn't been paying attention he would come give me a little nibble or just lay his head on my shoulder. He was very jealous and didn't like any of the other animals getting my attention, so yes, he was very spoiled.

Missing Shadrach has been very hard on all the Dederick's but it seems the ones who are having the hardest time are Diva and Little Timmy. Today, despite going for a walk and spending time with them, they both just seem sad.  Of course neurotic that I am now, I keep going out and staring at them.  They both just look at me like, "where is our friend?".  So on top of dealing with my own depression and sadness, I have my babies to take care of too. 

Last night I took everyone for a walk down on the creek, of course the dogs all had to go in for a swim, since the creek is so high with the run off.  My old dog Dudley jumped in also, not realizing how cold the water was, he has a lot of arthritis in his hips and the cold water made them lock up.  I had some trouble getting him up the bank and out of the water, but I explained to him that I couldn't lose both my boys in one week, so he was just going to have to live a little longer.  It was a long slow walk home and I'm petty sure even the goats babies were worried about him.

All in all it has been a rough animal week at our house.  Experiences like this are why people say they are never getting a dog/cat/goat/chicken/(fill in the blank here).  But even going through all the sadness I wouldn't trade my time with Shadrach.  I love all my animals and the sadness is just a little price to pay for all the joy, fun and happiness they bring.