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Moose vs Chickens

My mother has recently developed a thing for keeping chickens.  I assume as pets.  I don’t really know.  Yaris has developed a thing for sitting outside and staring at the chickens.  I assume it’s because she wants to eat them.  Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s because she wants to eat them and it’s not really an assumption.

A few weeks ago, my mother acquired a pair of black Silkies.

The little one may or may not have met an untimely demise. I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask Yaris.

Those were fairly nice chickens.  I like the way they look, all fuzzy and such.  They were also quite docile and friendly.  Apparently, Silkies are known for that kind of behavior.  I liked those chickens.

But then one day the Silkies were gone.  In case you were wondering, chickens were not on the menu.  Also, even if it had been on the menu, it would have been pretty easy to figure out if they were the Silkies, because Silkies are completely black inside and out.  I hear a lot of people find that to be really gross.  Weak.

Anyway, I’m told they were sold.  And in their place, I found a pheasken (a pheasant-chicken hybrid), a Nankin chicken, and a Delaware chicken (maybe?).

I was not impressed with these chickens/hybrids.  They didn’t look anything as amusing as the Silkies did nor were they so friendly.  They were noisy and all fancied themselves to be escape artists.  This ended up being a thing.

My parents asked me to watch over the chickens while they were away for the evening and also to keep an eye on Yaris.  I guess she had made several attempts to sneak into the pen earlier.  Ok…not a big deal.  But when I went to check up on the chickens after I fed the dogs, I noticed that one was suspiciously absent.  It was getting dark so I thought maybe it decided to roost for the night.  But…the roosting facilities were empty.  Hmm…and why is that big chicken constantly looking at the wall?  And what is the interesting noise coming from behind the fence?  SUGH.  The pheasken had escaped and it was too dark to find it.

THEN!  While I was trying to figure out how the pheasken escaped, the stupid big chicken leapt onto to the wall and tried to make an escape.  While I was standing right there.  It apparently thought that I would just let it escape.  Nope.  I knocked the chicken back in with a broom (it was a bit too far away for normal pushing).  Stubborn thing, it was.  I also figured that’s how the pheasken escaped.  My parents probably decided that the chickens wouldn’t be able to fly up to the top of the wall and didn’t think about how pheasants can fly.  Welp, I got to putting more netting around the top of the wall when the stupid big chicken exploited an area of the netting that was still loose and tried to escape again.  I had to knock it back down with a broom again.  This happened a few more times and I had to put a roof over the wall so the chicken couldn’t get out.

The little chicken that was still there looked like it was trying to roost but the big chicken kept stepping all over it.  It finally decided to also try to escape by using the big chicken as a step stool. It didn’t work too well and the little one never made it successfully to the top of the wall.

Anyway, I was THE ANNOYED the whole night.  Yaris was THE DISAPPOINTED.

This doesn’t really show that Yaris was disappointed, but it might help illustrate her interest in chickens (my mother acquired even more chickens since the events described above).

Interesting medical conditions

Just to be clear, I’m not actually a hypochondriac.  Sometimes I like to pretend that I am one so that I can have all these really cool diseases.  Um…I’m obviously not much like other people.  I like diseases.  And the agents that cause disease.  They’re really interesting to me.  But I generally don’t really believe that I have said diseases no matter how convincingly I might portray a sufferer of the disease in question.  So anyway, to the story!

Recently, I was looking into various medical conditions because I thought I might have broken my throat and later on, a few toes.

The throat story: One day last week, my right tonsil started hurting.  No reason as to why.  It just decided to hurt intermittently.  Then it decided to hurt all the time.  I was kind of annoyed with it.  Tonsils that hurt kind of interfere with swallowing and sometimes with turning my head.  So, I decided to look into causes on tonsil hurt.  I found a few.  The most interesting one to me was tonsilloliths.  Did you know such things existed?  It’s like a kidney stone…but in your tonsil.  They can get quite large too and look something like a tooth.  Can you imagine a tooth growing out of your tonsil?  I wonder if it would be any good for chewing.  Probably not.  You can use your teeth for chewing because they’re firmly seated in bone.  Tonsils aren’t really known for their sturdiness.  Anyway, tonsilloliths generally cause bad breath and sometimes will cause sore throats, difficulty swallowing, coughing fits, etc.  You can often remove them yourself.  Apparently, a lot of people post videos of that on youtube.  Otherwise, here is an image search for tonsilloliths.  And the wiki article for it.  It’s all so interesting!

The broken toe(s) story: A few days after breaking my throat, I was trying to get ice some ice for my coffee so I wouldn’t have to wait so long for it to cool off.  That involved removing the ice tray.  That involved a large frozen block of something falling off the top shelf of the freezer.  That involved my right foot being smashed by this frozen block of something because I didn’t realize that a large frozen block of something had fallen from the top shelf of the freezer.  My toes are quite black.  Even now.  At first, I thought I might have broken some of them.  Since then, I’ve decided that while I might have cracked the bone, it’s probably just some pretty bad bruising.  But still, this was excuse to look up different conditions that involve painful toes.  Did you know there is something called turf toe?  I thought it might be some interesting and exotic condition involving your toe.  Maybe there’s so much fungus growing out of your toe that it resembles an athletic field.  I don’t know.  But…it’s not that.  It’s just a really bad sprain of your big toe.  It was so anticlimactic.  Disappointing even.  I guess it makes people feel better to have some interesting sounding condition instead of “badly sprained big toe”?  Anyway, apparently people also post videos of turf toe on youtube.  And here are a bunch of images again.  Here’s the wiki for it, which is actually filed under a much cooler sounding name.

So…yeah.  Interesting medical conditions.  I might sample some of them.