Doors, stones, birds, footballs
I made a last minute decision to take last Friday off. Of course as is often the case, the day was targeted as an opportunity to do more work around the house as opposed to relaxation. There were two projects on the agenda for Friday,rebuilding the door to the chicken run and laying castle stones.
Before we got to work I drove Cindy to the fitness center where she has been teaching classes. While she taught the half hour class I walked to the Pet Supermarket right up the street to grab some stuff for Tuki. On the way home we stopped at Home Depot to grab another pallet of 60 castle stones.
The original door to the chicken run was built out of 2×4’s with hardware cloth. In the year it has been in place the 2×4’s have started to warp which was making the door difficult to close and left uneven gaps around the opening. A couple weeks ago Cindy and I bought a gate kit that is designed to fit a variety of openings. It is basically a steel frame that you attach your own lumber to. Having the core of the gate being steel should prevent the warping problem.
Assembly of the new door was not hard but it took me much longer than the one hour time listed on the box of course. The extra time was spent mostly coming up with the face board layout and adjusting the opening to allow for maximum swing. We discovered that if you close the door while inside the run you were potentially locked in due to the new latch arrangement. Cindy came up with an emergency string set up that will allow us to open the latch from the inside, just in case. We were both very pleased with the new door as it looked good and felt very sturdy.
While I was working on the door Cindy was busy doing the preliminary placement of another big load of castle stones. Originally we were going to line the rock area with the smaller castle stones but I reconsidered when I stood out there and looked at the area again. Visually I thought it would look better to use the same size/style of stone we had on the pool border. The larger size of the castle stone would also provide a better barrier to stones kicked around by the chickens. By the end late afternoon rolled around both Cindy and I were beat.
As we were cleaning up Cindy took notice of a bird circling over the back yard that at first looked like a hawk. She said she saw it dive bombing something in the back yard. It’s flying pattern looked very non-hawk-like to me. We found out later it was probably a Cara Cara which is a type of falcon.
Cindy saw the small animal still moving in the yard so I said we should go out and see what it is. I told Cindy I was worried it could be a baby bird as in the past there have been some ground nesting birds in the back yard. My fear was confirmed when we saw a small baby bird struggling in the grass. I didn’t see any blood but it seemed like the falcon damaged it’s wing. It was a small turtle dove, a very common bird on our property.
As we got close the little bird jumped and carried on, afraid we were yet another predator. Cindy and I had a very brief discussion about what to do. Cindy asked if we should just let nature take it’s course. I of course did not like that option and said we should try to do something. Although the bird was injured it didn’t seem like a fatal injury. Cindy carefully picked up and held the bird as I put some shavings in a rubbermaid bin to hold it temporarily. The little guy carried on a little bit but seemed to settle down once he realized we weren’t trying to harm it.
Cindy called the local animal conservancy and found out she could still drop the bird off today. We pulled out one of the small bird animal carriers in the shed to put the baby in. Cindy drove the bird there while I finished clean up from the projects. I really appreciated Cindy going out of her way to take the little bird in. The good news was the people at the conservancy said they think he will recover from his injury.
Speaking of birds we had been noticing some weird behavior from one of our black hens, Cupcake. She had been spending tons of time in the nesting box. A couple times we found her in the nesting box at night even. In addition Cindy noticed she was missing some feathers on her belly. We were worried she had some sort of health problem so we looked up the symptoms online. What we discovered was she was healthy but was exhibiting “broody” behavior.
When a hen becomes broody that means they are wanting to hatch baby chicks. As a result they will sit on eggs, even unfertilized ones endlessly, hoping they will hatch. We read that the hen will actually pull it’s own feathers off it’s belly to expose skin to facilitate more heat transfer to the eggs. When chickens get broody they can become more ill tempered and will sometimes stop laying eggs. Their broodiness can also become somewhat contagious, making other hens become broody as well.
Typically a broody chicken will snap out of it after 3 weeks. You can try to shorten that time span by removing the hen from the nesting box which we have been doing when we see her camping out there. In addition over the weekend we have been putting Cupcake in the old chicken tractor and run to isolate her from the other hens while giving her plenty of room to roam around if she chooses. Even in the tractor she has been spending most of the time up top in the boxes, trying to hatch babies that will never come. It is a bit sad in a way but hopefully she will snap out of it sooner rather than later.
On Saturday we had our second day of mostly hard labor. Cindy and I swapped places, she worked on doing the finish work on the new door, sanding and painting it. I was on my knees leveling the castle stones. After looking at how the stone was sitting currently, taking note of any forward or side lean I would pull it out and then throw down some paver base. I would then use my level to make sure the front and back of the stone was more or less even with the previous stone. It didn’t take real long for each stone but when you have to do it 60 times it added up to a nice tedious session of work. When I was done Cindy and I both were glad we went with the same style stone we used for the pool area. It just looked good. Now that we have solid barriers in place we can get more rock/rubber mulch to even out the area the chickens have excavated.
On Saturday night we were both beat from two days of yard work. We stayed home and watched our latest Netflix rental, “Burnt”. It seemed like it was almost a Gordon Ramsey biography, complete with a a loud mouth chef that threw things and swears a lot. It just had nothing all that interesting going on. I’d give it a B- rating. Cindy rated it lower.
On Sunday I was determined to not have the last day of my three day weekend be another labor intensive workfest. The temperatures Sunday morning were surprisingly cool, in the mid-50’s to start. Despite us both feeling sore, I pushed for us to do a bike ride, the shorter 20 mile back and forth to Dunkin Donuts.
I mounted my GoPro to the drops on my handlebar to capture the ride from a unique 1080P perspective. When I reversed the camera direction for part of the return ride I got a lot more crotch and a lot less of Cindy than I intended. As is normally the case with this route, on the way there we enjoyed getting pushed by a tailwind and on the way back we fought against the same wind in our face. With the cool temperatures it made the ride more or less enjoyable overall, way better than the 30+ mile hot and humid Ave Maria ride when Randall visited a couple weeks ago. Even with the modifications I made to my Trek, raising the handle bars and adding aero bars, my $300 Dawes still is more comfortable for me to log miles on, despite it’s much heavier weight.
During Sunday afternoon we did actually get to chill out a little bit. I hung the hammock I bought Cindy for Christmas and pulled over a chair next to it. I read a little bit while Cindy was on the iPad. It was such a beautiful day. A couple times Cindy and I looked upon the various fruits of our labor with pride. We really have done a lot.
We had our first Tarpons game of the year on Sunday. The 5:30 start time was a bit odd but it worked out well as far as the chicken bedtime goes, we would be home shortly after they go into the coop for the night. This is my 4th year as a Tarpons season ticket holder. I was hoping that perhaps this was the year that fan attendance finally picked up. When we sat down we quickly saw that was not the case. We were literally the ONLY two people in our entire section. If I were to estimate, maybe 300-400 people total were there.
Things really hadn’t changed much in other areas either. They had the same silly contests, the same low rent small cheerleading squad, and a product on the field that was less than exciting. The Tarpons did not really play that well. Their QB Chris Wallace looked fatter than ever and made a bunch of bad throws, repeatedly missing open receivers. Despite this they still crushed their opposition, 65-22. Hopefully this isn’t another season of lopsided blowouts. I find it to hard to believe that the team has made it to a 4th year. They HAVE to be bleeding money at this point. Somehow after going to see the Tarpons for going on 4 years I still underdressed for the game. I was frozen due to the ice rink being under the football field. I will be wearing long pants from now on.
The big highlight of the game for us came very early. The Central Florida Jaguars QB overthrew his receiver, sending the ball into the floor area just over the wall. One of the Tarpons DB had half flipped over the wall trying to defend the pass. He stretched far to reach the ball and then flipped it to me since we were literally the only fans in the area which was cool. I am now the owner of TWO game balls after catching another a couple years ago. I am sure they will be collector items someday, not. We got home around 8:15, leaving mid 4th quarter when the game outcome was already decided.
It was obviously a very busy three day weekend. Maybe sometime in the future I will actually feel caught up on home projects. I just don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon.