Tragedy on screen and in the yard

On Saturday the weather initially was pretty nasty with overcast skies, cool air and a pretty steady light rain.  I had weeds to pull so I didn’t let a little rain stop me.  I let the chickens out as well, they didn’t seem to mind getting wet either as they followed me around the yard.   After I finished up Cindy and I got in the van to go pick up the dogs.  Ali was going out late Saturday night and asked if I wanted to have the girls sleep over so of course I said sure.

We had to drive down to Cindy’s office to pick up the Tacoma.  Cindy left it there when she had her mom drive her home Friday after she had some severe dizziness episodes.  It seems to be vertigo-like symptoms that she gets on occasion but we don’t know for sure.

When we got home we both started working on our lists.  Cindy wrote hers out and mine was in my head.  One of the things I was doing was rearranging my desk to accommodate the new Samsung 27″ monitor I grabbed at Costco.  As I was futzing around trying to make it fit Cindy said I should just take the top hutch off my desk to give myself more open desk space.  At first I laughed her off as I told her I have stuff in the hutch portion of the desk that I would not have a place to house otherwise. However the gears in my head started to turn.

I did a quick survey of what would be needed to pull the hutch off which was minor, a few of those cam bolts used in put together yourself furniture and the the nailed on cardboard backing.  I then did an inventory of the items contained in the hutch portion of the desk.  The vast majority of them were items I did not really need or want anymore.  That settled it, the hutch was history.

To be honest the hutch looked pretty trashy. Years ago I bought a MASSIVE old tube style monitor.  In order for it to fit in my desk I had to carve a very messy hole in the cardboard backing to allow the back of the monitor to slide through it.  Of course now that the world is all flat screens I no longer had need for the hole but it’s ugly remains were still there.

After undoing the fasteners Cindy helped me pull the hutch off, revealing a large portion of the wall that I haven’t seen in years as well as a big chunk of reclaimed desktop space.  I decided this would also be a good opportunity to disconnect EVERYTHING that is on my desk and rewire it in a less rat nest-like manner.  Cindy also used the Dyson to sweep areas untouched for years and years.

My desk makeover spurred a chain of cleaning, organizing and throwing out.  Cindy totally redid her desk as well and we also hit the hobby room, cleaning that too.  We threw out a bunch and got rid of a bunch of stuff through our curbside scavengers that I can normally count on to remove almost anything I put out at the end of the driveway.

Initially I tried setting up my stuff with just a naked desktop but logistically it did not work very well.   I wound up using the top portion of Cindy’s desk, which she did not want anymore.  It allowed me some vertical options without overtaking the majority of my table top space like the hutch did.  I am digging the end results of all of our work.

So Saturday night Cindy and I went to see American Sniper, the 7:35 show was picked to give us more time to wrap up our chores.  I already expected it to be fuller than we like as this time of year the normally quiet theater is inundated with snowbirds looking to get their movie fix.  Well as soon as we pulled into the back parking lot we knew we were going to be in trouble.  There were more cars in the lot than either of us had ever seen before.

When we approached the ticket window we saw a long line of gray haired people.  We opted to use the automatic ticket machines that scare off most snowbirds, they were unoccupied.  When we got into the lobby the mass of humanity was again on display with 8 or 9 lines at the concession stand, none with less than 10 people in them.  Geezus christ.  Cindy said she would wait in line while I ran to the bathroom to pee.  When I came out and saw she hardly moved I suggested we just go in and find a seat and then one of us can come back out for refreshments.

So we go in and see the theater is fckin PACKED, the fullest we have ever seen for a Coconut Point movie.  We are accustomed to being able to arrive right at showtime and have zero issue finding a good seat.  Well we paid for that assumption this time.  We walked all the way up to the top of the theater and saw nothing but stray single seats or others that were being held by placeholders.  I am not the type that feels justified asking a whole row of people to move down to accommodate me  because I showed up at the last minute.

We paced up and down and saw nothing.  Our only option left was ALL the way in front at floor level, something Cindy was really opposed to.  She said the last time she sat in front she had a headache.  I told her we should just give it a shot.  I sat down and became the placeholder for the seat next to me as Cindy ran to the bathroom and got us something to drink.  By the time she returned almost every single seat was taken, there were even people just standing, ridiculous.  Experiences like this make me want to steer clear of the theaters until the snowbirds leave the area.

So I had sat in the front row of a theater once or twice before.  It is not an ideal experience for sure but I recalled that after a brief adjustment period of having such a big screen so close you get used to it more or less.  Yes it’s a pain to have to literally pan left and right with your eyes to see everything but it was bearable.

American Sniper opened to HUGE numbers last weekend and evidenced by our experience at the theater, it smashed the competition again.  Evidently people really want to see a real story about our military action in the Middle East.  The first thing that struck me about the film was how dramatic the transformation Bradley Cooper put himself through.  His transformation from Hangover days was incredible, packing on 40 pounds of mostly muscle for the role.  I thought he did a fantastic job portraying the lead character.

I felt the movie was really well done and left me feeling conflicted as it should.  Yes the heroism and bravery on display was compelling.  However the circumstances surrounding it, our invasion of Iraq based on fake pretenses which put both our military and innocent civilians in harms way was an underlying theme of the movie as well.  The film did an excellent job of showing the crushing emotional toll of war on a human being.  Despite us being involved in war operations for over 14 years in Iraq/Afghanistan I think the majority of the US population feels insulated from it, like it isn’t real.  American Sniper pulls back the curtain and based on it’s huge numbers, hopefully more people walk away from it with a more realistic and more appreciative viewpoint of what our men and women in the military have been going through for far too long. I give the flick a very solid A, worth the 200 million+ it has earned thus far.

The other movie Cindy and I watched this weekend was Boyhood, an incredibly risky and ambitious film.  They shot the film over a 12 YEAR period.  The lead character was 6 when it started and 18 when it ended.  you literally watch all of the characters in the movie age 12 years as it covers the life of a family that deals with the ins and outs of growing up.  I found the premise pretty fascinating and enjoyed the movie for all nearly 3 hours even though there wasn’t a single explosion or special effect in the entire thing.  It gets an A.

I skipped ahead in time because I needed to finish with what was an awful experience for Cindy and I that unfolded on Sunday.   We got to bed pretty late on Saturday night so we slept in somewhat on Sunday until around 8AM.  As I walked out into great room I looked out the window as I normally do to look at the chickens who normally come down from their coop at the crack of dawn.

As I looked out the window I instantly stopped in my tracks as I felt a huge wave of emotion enter my body.  I see feathers everywhere and three motionless birds on the ground.  At first I hoped I was still asleep and just in the middle of a nightmare.  I was not.  As I stared in disbelief I saw the left door to the top of the coop was wide open, how the predator gained access obviously.  It was horrible.

I had to go back in the bedroom and tell Cindy who was in the shower what happened.  I told her I didn’t want her to come outside.  Of course she instantly was hysterical and did not heed my warning. She came out as I was surveying the carnage, crying and gasping for air as she came close, just uttering the words “my babies…..” how we really felt about them.

I just sort of stood there, staring as tears filled my eyes both at the sight of our chickens, whom were happy and content just yesterday and seeing Cindy so devastated.  I imagined the terror the birds must have felt and the violent death they suffered and felt responsible.  They trusted me to care for their safety and obviously I failed in that responsibility.

We are pretty sure the predator that killed the birds was a fox.  We saw poop in the garden a couple times over the last few weeks that we identified as fox droppings.  The door that was open was secured at the top by a piece of aluminum framing with a screw in the middle.  To secure the door you rotate it down however there was nothing to prevent a well placed paw swipe from moving the bar so that the door would pop open.  I knew this arm was not very tight but it was at the top of the coop A frame, out of reach, or so I thought.  Plus I just never gave a second of thought to something being smart enough to spin it. It was just an awful, awful moment.

Despite being farm animals, the chickens were the first pets that Cindy and I adopted together.  We didn’t treat them like farm animals, we treated them like part of the family.  It made having them die in our own backyard all the more tragic.  We tried to figure out what time this happened.  Their bodies were not yet cold despite the temps in the 50’s yet it seemed impossible that Cindy or I would not have been woken up with what had to be an incredible amount of noise as the chickens scrambled for their lives.  It just added to the large load of guilt we already were feeling.

We immediately tended to burying the chickens, despite my still being in boxer shorts.  I dug a plot by the bird feeders where Betty, Wilma, and Pebbles liked to hang out so often.  There was such a thick cloud of sorrow and regret as we covered them up, it felt surreal.  I was so angry at myself for letting them down and having them suffer this fate because of my oversight.

The rest of our day as you can imagine was thrown out of whack.  Cindy did the lion share of the morbid task of cleaning up the coop and the evidence of the carnage that went on there.  I parked everything behind the garden out of view from the house.  Cindy did not want the visual reminder to spike the pain, neither did I.  Cindy and I have become very accustomed to gaining comfort and enjoyment from watching the chickens both in and out of coop.  We always would report to the other if the chickens went to bed or had gotten up each and every day.  To have that end unexpectedly, abruptly and as violently as it did is hard for us to handle.

For the rest of the day we both tried to stay as busy as we could as to not dwell on what happened.  We were both only mildly successful in doing so.  I am sure to many or maybe even the majority of people, getting this upset over the death of three chickens seems over the top.  After all, chickens are killed by the hundreds of thousands daily in order to become a cruel cog in the human being food supply. However to us, this was like having a family pet murdered three times over.

Our time with the chickens gave both of us tons of laughs and smiles as we watched them grow and explore the world inside the confines of my backyard.  Each bird had it’s own distinct personality.  Pebbles was the biggest and least social, she often would be off on her own where as the other two were normally side by side.   Wilma was the most pushy chicken, always wanting to be first in line with no problems pushing her way there.  Finally there was sweet Betty, the most docile and smallest of the three hens.  She would let you hold and pet her with little fuss.

Even Nicki and Sadie seemed confused by the lack of chickens in the yard.  Nicki especially LOVED following the three hens around the yard just to be a pest.  Being able to have the dogs and chickens unrestrained in the yard together was something I was really happy about.  It was like they all knew they were part of the same extended family.

I think eventually Cindy and I will get more chickens but it won’t happen before I do some modifications to the coop to prevent anything except a human being to gain access.  As much as I love most animals, if I would have been able to get out in the yard while the attack was going on, whatever was responsible would have had a very short life span if I got my hands on it, despite the predator just doing what it is hard wired to do.

I’m going to miss the chickens running under my feet, hopping up and down excitedly, taking rides on the chicken run as I moved it, running/flapping across the yard to pursue goodies, their silly noises and their self created,  funny looking dust baths they so loved to give themselves.

I am hoping we can avoid any more death in our circle of life for a little while.  It really chops you down.