Crying Uncle

Winter from hell, tornado (too close for comfort), earthquake, and now a hurricane? UNCLE!!!!

Preparations start tomorrow. Gathering anything in the yard that might take flight and stuffing it indoors - somewhere. Putting a new tarp on the two-stall barn roof. I was hoping this one would hold until I buy new metal roofing for it this fall, but last week's normal drenching proved otherwise. Leaky leaky. Cutting down two trees, both in poor health due to damaged trunks, that would undoubtedly land on the barn if the wind is bad enough. Hoping to temporarily relocate two ponies to the neighbors' sturdy barn for the duration, due to my unwillingness to cut down a big beautiful elm tree that could land on their housing. What I'm going to do with the chickens I don't know. Stuff them in the garage too I guess. I'll probably wind up chasing them around the rafters for days afterward. That'll be fun, I'm really looking forward to that. Groceries to buy, propane tank to fill, every water-holding container to be filled. Generator to start, since it hasn't been fired off for a while. Like, over a year awhile. Candles to find. I refuse to buy more, I have so damned many, it's just a matter of what box they're in. Hope I labeled it :) Batteries, of course. Stock up on dog food, horse grain, hay. Make the doggies wear their collars with their little name tags and my phone number - Just.In.Case. They hate collars. Oh well, I hate sobbing for lost dogs more.

I hope this all turns out to be unnecessary, but am inclined to assume the worst at this point. Stop the ride, I wanna get off!

The Weight of the Weekend

Stacked 800lbs of hay. Ditto for 600lbs of shavings. Cleaned 20 stalls - each day. I don't want to know how many pounds of manure that is. 40lbs of dog kibble. 150lbs of horse grain. 100 of chicken feed. 50lbs of stall deodorizer, 50lbs of rock salt for the well water softener. 9 precious eggs from my newly laying hens - 1lb? Installed half the siding for the new hen coop, inventing some amazing new yoga contortions while wielding a sawz-all while I was at it. Lugged 20 water buckets - each day - at 40lbs apiece. Again, I don't want to do the math. Picked 6lbs of luscious blueberries. Ate that much too, I'm sure :)

But the twelve ounces of prime steak hot off the grill, accompanied by the 750ml bottle of wine that I just shared with a good friend, is what put me over the edge. Goodnight. Hope your weekend was a good as mine!

Pourdown

I just came in from feeding horses and chickens, but stood outside with my dogs for a few extra minutes in the downpour, and marveled at the perfect silhouette of the huge old elm tree in the fading dusk. Light like that isn't possible without the rain to suffuse the glow.

Tornadoes to Rainbows

In 24 hours, no less. I spent yesterday afternoon and evening hunkered down in my basement with my doggies, waiting for the world to be rearranged. Thankfully, me and mine were spared. Other towns just to my south were not so fortunate. Utter devastation. This isn't supposed to happen here. Sure, every year we get an EF-0 or EF-1 twister that blows the lawn furniture around, maybe peels some shingles off a few roofs, but nothing like this. This was no joke, and I'm glad I took it seriously. I did come up a few times, thinking it was over, but each time I did a new warning would be issued in minutes, the 2nd and 3rd wave storms following the same path as the first. Intense is not strong enough a description. I've heard surreal used a lot today, I've used ugly, usually capitalized - UGLY! It was that.

My neighbor, braver and/or more foolish than I, actually saw the tornado, in the distance, from his upstairs window. I saw enough warning signs in the sky and clouds as the thunder began to rumble that I closed the horses up tight in their shedrow and was not surprised to see the tornado warning as soon as I got back inside. I also saw, through the opaque basement windows, the light outside grow dim and take on that greenish-black color of a bad bruise. If I never see that tint again it will be too soon.

This was not my first tornado experience. Naturally, tornadoes are my one phobia. I dealt with this throughout my childhood by educating myself about them as much as possible. I probably should have become a meteorologist. So I already had a plan and knew just what to grab when the warning came up on my screen. Dogs, flashlight, cell phone; check, check, check. Grab 'em and go. I was anxious but not scared. I felt prepared. I am more freaked about it now than I was at the time. Probably because I have been looking at pictures all day, letting the what-if's run through my head.

There's a sucker born every minute

Saturday morning began much like any other weekend morning in DarcC-land. I awoke, unleashed the hounds, fed and turned out the horses, and even managed to feed myself, all in short order. I then dashed directly off to the local feed store to procure a roll of fence wire, in order to install a new and improved dog yard. However, the universe had other plans, which initially manifested themselves as an inability to get the 5ft high, 100ft long roll of fencing in to the back of the effing car. No amount of rear-seat 60/40 split-bench folding, trunk slamming, and front power seat reclining could make that bad boy fit. Fine. I informed the nice boys who regularly stuff hay, shavings, grain, etc. into my erstwhile vehicle that I would have to return later, when my swedish-pickup (aka volvo wagon) driving friend would be coming to visit; I was certain he wouldn't mind a scenic trip to the feed store. He arrived and didn't mind at all, so off we set.

Only this time, the universe saw fit to have a little kitten start across the road in front of us. Eagle-eyes that I am, I detected scrawny from 150 feet away. As we got closer, instead of scampering, the kitten merely crouched down in the other lane. As we slowly crept by, I got a good look at him and saw that his entire face - eyes, nose, mouth, everything - was completely obscured by a crust of dried pus. Friend kept driving as my freakout began. I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that we didn't drive much farther, and luckily I keep my neighbor/vet's number on speed dial. I called her now, informed her that I was about to "do a stupid" and pick up a sick feral kitten, and would she help me, seeing as her office was already closed for the weekend. She said she would, and we returned, sans fence, to the dairy farm where the kitten sighting took place. I saw the kitten, thankfully out of the road, disappear into a hole in the door of a big old barn.

I knocked on the door of the farmhouse and when a man answered the door, pretended (while inwardly seething) to really want a kitten, and ask if I could catch one I had seen go into the barn. "Take them all" I was told. "If you can catch them, people dump them here all the time". Which is undoubtedly true, but 1) when I see its mother and several other probable generations too, you can trap/fix/release for short or no money, call the animal rescue league's spay waggin; and 2) this is a dairy farm, do you really want diseased cats running around your milk cows and veal calves? Bogus. He did find me a cardboard box to carry it home, and told me which barn door to use, and off I went.

I had visions of clambering around the big old place searching for this kitten, but he was in even worse shape than I thought and hadn't gone far, crouching just inside the door, sparing me the need to search and chase. His eyes were so obscured by crust that he didn't even see me reaching for him, and when I picked him up gave only one weak swipe with a front paw, no match for my heavy winter work gloves. Then into the box he went, without so much as a hiss or a yowl, and he was quiet and still the rest of the ride home. Here is a picture taken AFTER we had cleaned up his face! None of the pics capture what a rack of bones he is, held together by nothing but skin.

I put him into a dog crate with a bolster cushion and waited for Neighbor Vet, who didn't take long at all to arrive with supplies. She expertly cleaned his face with dampened gauze pads (I regret not getting "before" pictures in time), listened to him struggle to breathe, declared he had both an upper respiratory infection and a secondary herpes infection in his eyes, injected subcutaneous fluids, syringed human baby food into him, and pronounced him a male of the species. She then generously offered to open up the clinic to get the antibiotics, eye ointments, and de-wormer he required, so we followed her there and got the pills and potions, and returned home to further dose the little guy while she continued on her way to a family function. After the initial dosing, friend and I went to actually get the fence, litter box, teeny food and water bowls, kitten kibble, and dinner, and when I returned little Crusty was sleeping like the proverbial dead, covered in the blanket I'd put in earlier, head propped up on the bolster of the cushion. He woke up long enough for me to rearrange his crate and add the litter pan, and had perked up enough to purr as I cradled and petted him. Wild kitten tamed, at least temporarily.

Here's the reaction from the inmates who run the asylum:

"Holy Crap! It's a kitten! When did we get a kitten? I didn't ask for a kitten! Why was I not consulted?"




















Luna, Willow, and Wylie don't look too happy. Midgie is distinctly displeased.











Mooney wonders if he is somehow not cute enough anymore, now that he is a big seven month old boy?






Oblivious to the uproar his presence has caused, Crusty slumbers on... He perked up one more time around nine, just long enough to meow a couple times, and otherwise gasped, gurgled, snorted and sneezed his way through the night. It was so bad whenever I couldn't hear him breathing I thought I'd lost him. But he was still there in the morning, so I guess he decided to live. Neighbor Vet came by to check on him right after I'd dosed him again, and was going to come back to give him more fluids, but wound up coming back to take him home with her to be able to pump fluid into him all day. I only know how to give intramuscular shots to horses, I guess I should learn cats and dogs, and intravenous of all types. He spent last night with her and went to work with her today, to be tested for FIV and FELV. If he had tested positive he would have been put down, happily he is negative for both. He is spending tonight next door as well for a final dose of fluid in the morning and a steam bath all night to help his breathing. I'm working at home tomorrow so he'll come back in the morning, I'll post an update tomorrow.