Spring has arrived up here in the Tennessee Mountains. I’m enjoying hanging out wash outside again on warm sunny days. We’ve planted most of our garden already. The red beets, green beans, lettuce, and radishes are all up.
All kinds of things are happening on our “farm” lately thanks to my dear doggies, Shep and Natasha.
Sandy, our ancient lab dog, has been getting in on the action too.
First of all they treed my cat, Sarah Annabelle. The other week, Dana put a cat door in my sunroom that leads out to my enclosed garden. I had visions of Eloise and Annabelle lazily sunning themselves in my garden to their heart’s content. For some reason known only to cats Annabelle decided to explore further. The first night when we heard the dogs barking up a storm, we discovered Annabelle up a tree. As soon as she saw us, Annabelle jumped down in the driveway, I let her in at the French doors, and all was peaceful again.
The next night (at 4 am again) when the dogs started frantically barking, I decided that Annabelle could walk her furry body around back to cat door. I ignored her scratching and meowing at the French doors and went back to sleep. Around six am I heard a loud ruckus in the back yard and went to investigate. To my horror I saw all three of my dogs surrounding Annabelle, who was lying on the ground. When I yelled at the dogs, Shep grabbed Annabelle and began dragging her around the back of the enclosed garden. I ran outside to rescue my dear cat. At first I was afraid that my dogs had killed my cat as poor Annabelle was limp, quite muddy, and in shock from her ordeal with the dogs. Once we got her inside, Dana checked Annabelle over and said that she would be alright. I felt guilty for not letting Annabelle come inside earlier. The next day Annabelle was limping around, but in a couple more days she was back to her normal self again. Meanwhile Eloise, my other cat, has disappeared.
Then a couple of weeks later when I was inside having a slow day lying in my recliner, I heard a big commotion outside. I looked out I beheld the dogs chasing chickens all over the yard. A gust of wind had opened up the door to their pen and the dear chickens had decided to investigate the world outside the fence. I jumped- PJ’s and all- into the fray and managed to rescue the rooster, but when the dust settled three hens were dead and the rest had disappeared into the woods. That evening Dana found two hens and we coaxed the dear things back into the pen again. The next day I rescued two more hens, but one died the following day. So now we have one rooster without any tail feathers, two normal looking hens, and one hen without any tail feathers. They are quite the most motley-looking batch of chickens that you have ever seen. Our egg production has dropped down to one green egg a day. Thankfully the twenty-four chicks that we bought a month ago were in another part of the barn and was safe- just eating like little pigs and busy feathering out. I told Dana that if we had any more action around this place, I’d be ready to keel over and lie down like a dead chicken myself.
