Spiders and Chickens and Nails, Oh My

With the siding pre-primed, we're getting ready for another weekend of siding fun this weekend (if you want to join us, we'll be getting started Saturday around 2pm, Sunday around 10am). That meant going around the house pulling random stuff stuck to the walls off and making a list of places where various pipes and stuff needs to be flashed around.

Which meant this evening we spent a lot of time rustling around in the shrubbery. That's Noel in there. He's smiling for the camera, FYI.

And it also meant we got to get up close and personal with a whole bunch of spiders, including this one. (I put my finger in there for scale.)

In other news, we had a bit of a tragedy last week that I never got around to writing up. On Wednesday morning, some raccoons got into the chicken house and killed two of the chickens. Rosie very bravely chased them away from the bodies and guarded the house and the bodies until I was able to come back her up, and she's been super-vigilant ever since.

The two killed were Amy and one of the others. Here are our survivors, and Carole is rocking her usual classy dirt beak.

I didn't lose much in the stroke last year -- I was super lucky -- but I did lose half the chicken names. Gone, woof, just like that I can't remember what those two were called. I guess I could have looked at the hundreds of labeled photos I have and worked it out, as I did with everything else I briefly forgot, but I never did. I couldn't bring myself to worry too much about it since they will never, ever answer to their individual names. Now that is only 50% as sad as it was.

Anyway, after the trauma of being attacked, they're doing remarkably well. And repairs are in progress; in the meantime we're back to our old manual opening and closing of the door.

posted by ayse on 09/10/14