Some mornings are down right strange...strange in the sense of not being normal.
Take this morning for example. For starters, I crawled out of bed at 6:30, fifteen to thirty minutes earlier than usual. Therefore, I finished my coffee and morning Bible/prayer time a little earlier as well. The feeding of the cats and the horse went about as usual. Snip's irritated eye is almost back to normal (it looked infected yesterday morning.)
Then I went to the chicken coop. I felt like kicking myself as I saw that Houdini (the resident varmit) had actually been in the trap last night--the chicken carcass was gone and the trap had been sprung. Only, and this is the really aggrivating point, the door had gotten caught on a cinder block!! So the evil creature escaped--and killed two more chickens. There was a third one with the back of her head opened up, so I determined to go ahead and butcher her so we could get some good out of her rather than letting the other chickens peck her to death.
I came in and asked Savannah to get some water heating to scald the poor little biddy with. I sharpened my knife (I could have done a better job of it), and went out to get stuff set up. I took time to air up the lawn mower tire (I've been doing that at least twice a day, but often three times). Curiosity made me giggle as she got this surprised look on her face as the mower deck started to rise. She is such a silly little cat. She doesn't hear so great either...but that's neither here nor there.
When Savannah came out, I handed her the killing cone and dived into the chicken coop. It was quite easy to grab the little hen from her perch on top of one of the crates (they were supposed to be nesting boxes, but the girls seem to like laying their eggs on the ground and just sitting on the crates instead). One feels almost sorry to butcher a wounded animal like that, but it's really kinder than letting her sisters kill her gradually.
Once she bled out, I took her into the house, scalded her and then brought her back outside. Since it was just one bird I decided to pluck it by hand. Savannah held the bird up by the legs and I quickly snatched the feathers off. We actually scalded this one long enough unlike the last ones we did.
I then dressed her out. The neck seemed to have been bruised up pretty bad. What was probably the most fascinating was the discovery of the 'egg factory'. I pulled out at least five recognizable yolks of some size, and then attached to the inside of the back was a cluster of tiny yolks!! If you have ever seen fish roe, it was kind of like that (only larger). I wish I knew how they got the white and the shell around them...
When I was done dressing out the chicken I washed up some then went and scrubbed my head. This all took place before breakfast. It was about after 9:30 before I had breakfast--which was naturally followed by dishes.
That beef in the oven is smelling awfully good...and even though I'm not really hungry (yet), I'm starting to look forward to lunch!
Take this morning for example. For starters, I crawled out of bed at 6:30, fifteen to thirty minutes earlier than usual. Therefore, I finished my coffee and morning Bible/prayer time a little earlier as well. The feeding of the cats and the horse went about as usual. Snip's irritated eye is almost back to normal (it looked infected yesterday morning.)
Then I went to the chicken coop. I felt like kicking myself as I saw that Houdini (the resident varmit) had actually been in the trap last night--the chicken carcass was gone and the trap had been sprung. Only, and this is the really aggrivating point, the door had gotten caught on a cinder block!! So the evil creature escaped--and killed two more chickens. There was a third one with the back of her head opened up, so I determined to go ahead and butcher her so we could get some good out of her rather than letting the other chickens peck her to death.
I came in and asked Savannah to get some water heating to scald the poor little biddy with. I sharpened my knife (I could have done a better job of it), and went out to get stuff set up. I took time to air up the lawn mower tire (I've been doing that at least twice a day, but often three times). Curiosity made me giggle as she got this surprised look on her face as the mower deck started to rise. She is such a silly little cat. She doesn't hear so great either...but that's neither here nor there.
When Savannah came out, I handed her the killing cone and dived into the chicken coop. It was quite easy to grab the little hen from her perch on top of one of the crates (they were supposed to be nesting boxes, but the girls seem to like laying their eggs on the ground and just sitting on the crates instead). One feels almost sorry to butcher a wounded animal like that, but it's really kinder than letting her sisters kill her gradually.
Once she bled out, I took her into the house, scalded her and then brought her back outside. Since it was just one bird I decided to pluck it by hand. Savannah held the bird up by the legs and I quickly snatched the feathers off. We actually scalded this one long enough unlike the last ones we did.
I then dressed her out. The neck seemed to have been bruised up pretty bad. What was probably the most fascinating was the discovery of the 'egg factory'. I pulled out at least five recognizable yolks of some size, and then attached to the inside of the back was a cluster of tiny yolks!! If you have ever seen fish roe, it was kind of like that (only larger). I wish I knew how they got the white and the shell around them...
When I was done dressing out the chicken I washed up some then went and scrubbed my head. This all took place before breakfast. It was about after 9:30 before I had breakfast--which was naturally followed by dishes.
That beef in the oven is smelling awfully good...and even though I'm not really hungry (yet), I'm starting to look forward to lunch!
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