First Fire of the Year

It's just getting cold here in Alabama, so I lit a fire the first chance I got! Fisher (the new kitten) was totally enthralled by it, but Buddy just continued sleeping as usual.

Obie Andrew Langley, 1919-2009

Obie & Fisher

This is the wee kitten we're fostering from the Randolph County Animal Shelter in Wedowee.

Mmmm . . . the last taste of summer!

While building the new chicken run, Vince and I saw a mantis, who I'm hoping is one of the babies we hatched.

The new chicken run

Mr.s Vincent Pagniucci and R. Alex Ubeda helped construct a new fence for the old chicken run. Drenched in sweat, we worked hard for three days, pulling up the rusty wire and rotting wood from many years of patchwork fencing, digging holes and hammering nails. Luckily, there was cold beer at hand, warm meals a la Sarah, and the swimming wool shimmering in the fading evening light. The coop now contains a peacock, a peahen, a full-grown chicken (and our only egg-layer so far), six white broiler chicks who we've raised from babies (including Peep-Peep, aka Cheep-Cheep, and Busted Head), and two retarded hens who are recovering from life in a commercial chickenhouse, crammed in cages and pumped full of chemicals . . . they can hardly walk and are terribly pathetic. We've also found a tortoise in there who appears once in a while.

Scardy-Cat Chicken

We recently got a couple of chickens that had lived in a feed house for their whole lives. They are sweet, but scared of everything! One night I was trying to get all of the chickens into the coop from the yard and this one just hid its head and pretended it was invisible.