He just hit puberty and has had an awakening that his species just cannot survive without him. I think I was there the day the first ounce of testosterone hit his brain. He must have made a pass at every single hen in the yard! It was like he was on meth or something! There was no slowing this little rocket rooster down at all. His speed doubled after his first score.
This ol' camera slinger loves to take pictures late in the afternoon when the shadow are long. It's just soooo purdy then, don'tcha know. This is taken from my mailbox at the highway and looking (true) northeast. It's actually due magnetic north in case you like such things as magnetic variance.
Pleasant Oak Drive looking north.
Descending Mustang Drive.
Well! Flatten down the hutches, mateys! It’s April!
Doesn’t that just make you want to blast off for Ceti Alpha 5 and meet Khan Noonien Singh for lunch?! I’m telling you, neighbors, if
time flies by any faster, we’ll feel the breeze!!
Ok! Ok!
Enough whining; on with the blog.
Rancho Report: it’s been rather hectic around here
(oh…like…that’s news). Lots of good stuff
being done but lots of good stuff not being done or delayed due to rain,
computer exigencies, unexpected trips to town, church overhaul, enervating
circumstances (seems to be a lot of that), and such (all with litany and all
are expedited). Some stuff gets done while other stuff has to wait and gets
staged according to priority. Some things crowd in to the head of the priority
line and others are bumped rearward. Chickens croak, hose ends get run over,
batteries die, or a car breaks down (and won’t be repaired until the local
mechanic who is out of service due to his priorities like….getting married). It’s
really not like we’re one little blue pill from being in an asylum. It’s more
like that it’s just another day at the ranch.
The other day (most things here at the rancho happen
then), I had to get a haircut so the dog catcher wouldn’t be tracking me down. Other
than dear friend and ultra-high-class stylist, Allen Zailian in Fresno, I’m
glad to say that my barber is the best (regular) one I’ve found in my entire
experience of having my locks shorn from my noggin.
Several years ago, and after years of lousy
haircuts, I had just about decided to either just go full “onion head” (for all
you Andy Griffith fans out there) or go “au natural” to see just how long and
curly my hair would get if left alone.
On the reality side, I couldn’t see Ol’ Ran being
referred to as “Rancher Curly” (think “Curly” of the “Three Stooges”) or “Ol’ Mop
Head Hippy Rancher Dude”, or, with a switch of hats and adding some braiding, “Chief
Bulging Buffalo”. And, Connie got a vote which was, “Neither!” So, it was
decided to take yet another step into the unknown and try another local barber.
Just across the street from the old “SaveMart”
supermarket at Olive and D Street, is a small strip mall with which I had been
familiar for many years (and even remembered it being a dirt lot, oh, so
many years ago). But, I had developed a bad case of perceptual filtering when
it came to the (just another) barbershop that had been there for a couple of
decades. Almost out of desperation, I ramped up my detestable fortitude, pulled
the “Coop deVille” into a slot, and parked in the barber’s chair. The place? “Randy’s”!
The first thought was, “Where have I been?!”Wouldn’t you know, Randy is the best barber that I’ve ever had cut my hair! Come to find out, he’s a home-grown guy who went to the same high school as me and who knows some of the same locals folks! Such a deal! He’s also one of the nicest humblest fellas you could hope to meet! To say that I’m now a “regular” is a given. I won’t be going anywhere else!
Anyway, moving on, I left my pile of locks on Randy’s
floor and will feel comfortable showing up in public again for at least a month.
It’s kind of nice to look in the mirror after the whack and actually recognize
the guy staring back at me. The un-cut guy looked like an old egg rancher with
a hen stuck under his ball cap. That also means that I can now service my
chickens in full resplendence of tonsorial perfection. Life is good.
It rained!
After too long a while and thinking that it was going to be a really brown
season, we were hosed down with a healthy dose of wetness. Then, a few days
later, more rain came! The flowers rejoiced and the result was the wonderful arrays
of spring wild flowers cavorting in the wind on our gorgeous green hills.
After a short time of almost drying out, we’re
getting more of that elixir of life. Good stuff! When this next batch of rain
comes in, we will still only be at about 50% or so of our seasonal norm. So,
you can imagine that every drop of precipitation brings a smile to the locals’
mugs.
That also means that Success Lake is no longer
“Stuck Duck Pond”. We’ve got water in that there lake! You should see the happy
fishermen along the banks and afloat in their bass boats! Sure makes a fella
wish he had a day off to go fishing!
Today (as in, it didn’t happen the other day) was such a beautiful day that we decided to fire up “Ol’ Smokey”,
the grill. The other day (yep…that one), we found some chicken that was priced “40%
off” due to a looming “end of saleable date”. But, it wasn’t just chicken; it
was a marinated leg/thigh package. The Ol’ Chicken Plucker grabbed two family
packs and hauled them home. One went into the freezer next to the sirloin steak
that was 50% off (!!) for the same reason. The steak is next…and soon!
The chicken was grilled along with some zucchini and
onions. Two huge baker potatoes were stacked on the rack and allowed to get
started cooking. They were finished in the microwave (which was expected). All
came out great no doubt due to my inferior skills at grilling (i.e. I got
lucky).
We dined outside on the patio where the temp and weather
was perfect. It was just so peaceful that we determined to do it again. Our big
beautiful glass dining and patio set with large comfortable spring-style chairs
hadn’t been used in a long long time! So, that was another treat!
It was also cool to take a few bread scraps and
chuck them over the patio enclosure so the chickens could partake of the feast,
too. It is always a hoot to watch them hustle around trying to snatch every
morsel from the others despite all of them being members of the corpulent
clucking crew and far from starving.
Abbie the Princess Wonder Pooch Report: I have to
say, my little doggie has been sharpening her “huntin’ dawg” skills lately. The
other day (did I mention that that’s when most things happen around here?), she
had on her shock collar because the hens were in the coop takin’ care of
business (BTO!!). Though not usually allowed on the patio, we heard her barking away and
knew that she had treed something and that it was probably behind the fridge. Instead,
once out back, we saw that she was at the other end of the patio which told us
there was a critter of some sort hiding behind the cabinets there. Ol’ Ran, not being afraid of too many things that are a fraction of his size, started moving and shaking things and got immediate results. A big rat scampered across the top of the gardening tools shelf.
I fired my CO2 BB pistol (hey….I still remember the
Boy Sprout motto, “Be Prepared”) never thinking that I didn't have eye protection and that a ricochet would ruin my day. It was a clean miss largely due to being a bit
slow on the draw and thinking that he would appear at the bottom and to the
rear of the shelf.
He made a dash (a mad one, presumably) to my left
which gave him access to a few things behind which he could hide. The first
reasonable spot was one of our refrigerators. It was movin’ and shakin’ time
again. As I did that, the rat made a run for it. That was a real dumb move to
do when you have an ace huntin’ dawg at hand.
There was a brief rustling and scurrying and then
silence. I didn’t even see what happened! When I looked into the back yard,
there Miss Abbie was with a huge raton in her mouth and showing the world her limp
trophy. Go, Abbie!!
Fuzzer Report: the day prior to Abbie’s victory, it
was my turn to claim some fame. A fuzzer met me at the door of the coop as the
egg harvest commenced. The fact that it was sauntering and not fleeing for dear
life really fractured my framistam! I did my own sauntering back to the house
and grabbed the genuine “Critt-R-Gitter” and started out back to wreak a bit of
havoc on the varmint population.
The first fuzzer was on the back side of the barn
and I was on the near side figurin’ (I do a lot of that) to head him off at the
pass that should still exist from when they built this place. When, what before
my two non-bloodshot eyes should appear, but a second brazenly fearless fuzzer
parked atop my number 4 garden box! The arrogant flea toter was just sitting
there mocking me like, “Watcha gonna do, you big, ugly, overweight, middle-age,
taco eater? You gonna, like, shoot me or something?”
Slowly I lifted my sweet little scoped Ruger and
secured it against my shoulder (such shots are something I don’t ordinarily
do). At that range, the critter looked like a large football in my scope so I
merely squeezed the trigger and let the Ruger do the work.
After a sharp report, the target was laid out on the
ground but was moving a bit too much for my liking. For one, even as much as I hate fuzzers, I don’t
like wounding an animal. So, I made quick work of the matter with a second
closer shot. Taco Tucker: 1; Fuzzer: 0. You know….someone should tell the
vermin crowd that old guys like me just don’t like to be mocked.
Chickenin’ Report: all is well with our league of lazy
layers. That’s not to say that we haven’t experienced some attrition in our
ranks but, by and large, things are moving along fairly well.
For one thing, our girls are steadily producing now.
That’s a good thing. We harvested a two day total of 78 eggs one time and
almost the same a couple of days later. We’re averaging about 2.5 dozen a day
so far but really need to see another dozen come about. Feeding clucking and
crowing pets is not why we’re here.
It’s not like we don’t pamper these feather brains.
Though they are stuffed most of the time, they turn rabidly gluttonous at the
first available grain of scratch or crumb of bread. Though they live at the “Hen
House Hilton”, for some reason, they think they live at “Starvation Heights”,
or something. They even all but mug me for treats when I step out into the barn yard.
‘Puter Update: do you remember the old saying, “when
it rains, it pours”? Well, as noted earlier, it rained and poured the other day.
And, included in the raindrops was at least one large caliber bullet. My big
Dell quad-core work horse box forgot to duck and the slug went straight into its
non-pea-pickin’ four terra-byte heart (i.e. the hard drive disk). I really didn’t
need that kind of grief especially since it had only been a short time since
the last bucket load of computer grief was dumped out.
This is where the “be prepared” motto really comes
in handy. My standby box is a really nice HP Pavilion 23 All-in-One dual-core
machine with 6 GB of RAM. It was already configured as a backup box prior to
the previous crash less than a year ago. Out it came and I was back online
rather quickly. Most of the labor was for installing the new printers that had
been added since it was last used. No biggy, but it surely sucked up a lot of
that ever-so-valuable commodity, time.
I also had immediate access to my sweet little XP machine
which allows a lot of work to be done as well as providing Internet access.
However, it has not yet been configure as a backup box yet. It won’t be fully
configured as such but you can bet I’ll be making some upgrades and
improvements on it on my next… day off.
So far, it comes in handy for watching things on
YouTube since it is connected to the HDMI 4 input of the big screen. It’s also great
for multi-tasking since it has a built-in card reader, a CD/DVD RW, and it incorporates
the software to burn anything but a barn.
A quick bit of homework allowed the Computer Dude to
decide on a replacement drive for the big work box. It’ll be a Seagate "FireCuda" 2
Terra-Byte highbred SSD/mechanical drive (at the usual 7,200 spin rate). It’s
the best of both worlds where I get the speed of the SSD and the capacity of
the spinner drive. Next month, I’ll add a second 6 Terra-byte spinner drive for
storage. That will take the load off meaning that it should last longer as a
storage drive than as a 24/7 workhorse. The “Newegg” order is on the way and
may even be here tomorrow. It’ll be a busy weekend (as if…)!
Most of my backups were made and I managed to get a
lot off the affected drive. However, its performance deteriorated rather
quickly so I still lost a lot of data (though not much was worth losing sleep
over. Lots of technical stuff lost, though). It’ll take a couple of months to
get everything glued back together like I want it. Life goes on but it’s will
go by more easily with this new super-fast hard drive (have I mentioned that I’m
convenience oriented and that “easy” is my friend?).
There you have it: another episode of what’s
happening at Rancho Relaxo, home of Rancho Ran, the world's foremost authority
(the previous one died), Connie the Canner (world's greatest side-cook), where
things can get…interesting, and where… you just never know.
