Turkey soup and tummy aches

I had good intentions when I made turkey soup for our dogs and cats.  We were cooking the white tom turkey that came from our Bourbon red turkeys for Christmas.  I took the neck, giblets, tail and some turkey wings frozen from a previous turkey meal and put them in the crockpot where they cooked as our turkey roasted.  I added a box of stuffing mix to the pot to soak up the broth in the evening and everyone got some.  We gave each dog their own little paper bowl so there wouldn’t be any fighting.  They loved it of course but we regretted it later in the night when Sadie got a tummy ache. 

Sadie is an old, small Jack Russel that sleeps with us.  She has had tummy problems before - she gets gas I think.  She shakes and her ears are up on alert and she can’t stay still.  The only thing that helps is for me to pat her back like you do a colicky baby. I don’t know why that soothes colic but it does. If I start drifting off to sleep and the patting slows down she scratches at me.  I tried just putting her off the bed but then she paces around the floor and I can hear her nails tip tapping, click, click, click and she goes under the bed and scratches at the floor.  

It took hours last night before she settled down to sleep. I patted and patted and patted. No more soup for her.  We are actually making some more today from the carcass of the turkey but she will get something else.  All of the other dogs and cats were happy though and the other dogs were quite content last night.

We have a light dusting of snow on the ground and more on the way.  I have kept the birds locked in the last few days so the coop stays warmer but they aren’t too happy about that.  One of the ducks is starting to lay again but I have news for her, the eggs will be cooked and fed to the cats if the egg eater doesn’t get them first.  I am picking up the frizzle eggs too and cooking them for the cats.  No chicks or ducklings are wanted until its warmer.

I had to separate the big male ducks.  They were doing a lot of fighting and chasing and keeping everyone stirred up.  I moved the younger one into the chicken side of the coop.  He spends all his time in front of a ventilation opening between the coops that has netting over it.  The old drake parks himself on the other side of the net and they fight through the fence.   But at least they aren’t chasing each other wildly and fighting beak to beak. 

The two little frizzle roosters that were running free separated themselves.  One of them moved into the side with the ducks.  Two Ameraucana hens live there and he went to live with them.  The other little rooster is a real meanie and he has stayed in the front of the barn.  One or two big hens are always out there with him. They run by me when I open the coop door to feed and I let them hang around in the front of the barn.  They like to lay in the tub of hay I put out for the cats to sleep in.

I have cooked and baked so much in the last few days we are only going to eat leftovers for a few days.  Went and got feed this morning and Pepsi for me and we are ready for the snowstorm.

Let's talk and eat chocolate

What can you say about last week?  I have been eating chocolate and listening to quiet country Christmas music to try and keep from crying all weekend.  Sometimes the news is just too much.  Those innocent little kids, killed by another kid who our system failed.  So sad.

Our country does need to talk and gun control has to be a part of it.  As a country person I know guns are a valuable tool.  We own a gun.  But our country just doesn't have a sensible attitude about guns.   No one other than the military needs semi-automatic or automatic weapons.  Things need to be done, its obvious what we have doesn't work. 

But there are other things we need to talk about too.  Our mental health system is failing people.  We are holding the rights of individuals over the rights of society as a whole.  People cannot get the help they need for those they love unless they do try something horrendous.  Our prisons serve as mental hospitals.  It’s a system that desperately needs an overhaul and we need to discuss it. 

The video games and movies we let children watch or play do have something to do with the disconnect from reality, the tolerance of violence, the normalizing of abnormal behavior.  You can trace the upswing in violence to the rise of more and more violent and realistic video games and movies.  There’s no doubt in my mind they play a part in this mess we are in.  We need to talk about that.

And the media - and ultimately our fascination with violence, the competition to outdo the last guy who did something violent, the media shrilling everyday about this or that “record” in violence, all of that feeds violence and we have to talk about it.  Here in mid Michigan the media can’t stop reminding people that the Newtown shootings are not the worst school murders, citing an 80 year old incident in Bath where a bomb killed many elementary school children.  It’s not the same and we aren’t in a competition. 

We don’t need the honor of having “the worst” record.  Children don’t need to worry about bombs as well as shooters when they go to school.  As adults we know of all the horrors that are in this world.  But our children shouldn’t.   We shouldn’t even be bringing up the Bath bombing.  It’s not relevant and I repeat we don’t want the distinction of holding the record for most dead school children.

Every night the media reminds us that the last shooting or other violent death brings us closer to the “record”  or has exceeded the record.  We count the senseless acts of violence up and it takes more and worse violent acts to get our attention.   Let’s stop announcing the shootings and other violent acts.  It hasn’t seemed to help. No publicity for the stupid and evil.  Let’s make it news when there hasn’t been any violent deaths and announce how many days we have accumulated to a violence free days record. 

Candle light vigils and piles of memorial junk don’t help anything so let’s stop showing them.  Let’s focus on kids doing good things, adults helping others, and stop focusing on the terrible and sad things in the world.  If we portray a sad and hopeless world filled with violence that’s what we will have.

Oh yes this country needs to talk, about a lot of things.  There can’t be sacred cows and political correctness needs to take a vacation.  We need to get it out, work it through and just make the changes we need.  A New Year is beginning and we don’t need to accept violence any more.  Let’s talk - and eat a lot of chocolate.

Egg thief is still around

It’s a clear crisp morning here in Michigan.  The sun makes the 30 degree temperature bearable.  I went out to the barn early this morning, in attempt to foil the egg thief but I may have been too early for some of the hens to lay.  I set the light timer back an hour a few days ago so there would be less time between when they got up and started laying and when I got to the barn.  However I only collected 4 eggs from the 15 hens in there.  I also collected 4 eggs from the silky chickens and there are only 5 hens in that pen.

Last week I put a dozen large plastic Easter eggs, the kind you open and fill with candy, in the nests as an attempt to confuse the egg thief.  It crunched some of them in its teeth cracking them apart.  Some were under the nest boxes, where I often find eggshells.  It’s obvious from the teeth marks that it isn’t the hens eating their own eggs.  I don’t think a cat could open its mouth that wide to take the whole plastic egg in it and bite down.  I am leaning toward an opossum even more.  Now I just have to catch it and kill it.

I opened the outside hen run up so they could go wander this morning.  There is a little dusting of snow here and there and they ran over and were picking at it.  I think they confused it with bread crumbs.  The grass is still green and I wanted them to be able to harvest a little of it.   They will be all over the yard I know and in the front of the barn eating cat food but it keeps them from being bored.  Some of the hen ducks are also flying over the fence and wandering around.

I finally got the white turkey butchered.  He dressed out at around 15 pounds with a decent breast, good for a young heritage bird.  He had grown a few dark feathers in his wings.  The older toms were starting to pick on him and he was starting to gobble and strut so it was time.  I may cook him tonight or tomorrow or freeze him for Christmas, haven’t decided. 

Another stray cat has shown up at the house.  She’s a big black and white fluffy cat, very friendly but it looks like she was well groomed and although she’s thin now she was probably well cared for at one time.  She rubs around my feet and meows in the barn.  I gave her some dry food off by herself because she seemed reluctant to get in the feed bowls with the other cats.  She eats a little but it seems like she’s looking for something else.  Maybe her family. 

I don’t know if the fluffy cat was dropped off or wandered here.  But Steve told me I needed to stop sitting out in front of the yard with cats on my lap and draped over my neck where people could see me and think about how much I love cats and how I might like theirs.  I like cats but I don’t really want another female one.  I am hoping she’s spayed because her head is large like a males and she is big, sometimes cats spayed early take on male traits.   But the underside is definitely female.  I haven’t been able to pick up the black stray that has been here a couple weeks now although he’s no longer afraid of me.   I think it’s male but who knows.

The bad thing about strays is you don’t know if they are carrying fleas or diseases.  But when you have a barn and feed cats there you always end up with more cats.  And the new research that shows cats carry a parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, that can cause depression and mental illness in humans doesn’t make me feel better about having a lot of them around.  Read more about that here;  

http://www.examiner.com/article/common-cat-parasite-is-linked-to-mental-illness-and-suicide-humans  It gives new meaning to the crazy old woman hoarding cats stereotype.

I am off to taste test 3 types of chocolate peanut butter cups I am experimenting with for a cooking article.  They are cooling and hardening and Steve is waiting impatiently to tell me which one tastes the best.  I’m going to run out and check for more eggs too.

Bugsy is gone

We lost another one of our old dogs.  It wasn’t unexpected in some ways; Bugsy was the dog whose soul mate Hazel died last month.  He had never been happy since she was gone.  He was bladder incontinent but still was able to go out to poop.  Before his friend Hazel died he waited for her to finish what she wanted of her special chicken soup then he got to finish the bowl.  I wanted to quit making the chicken soup but Steve kept making it for Bugsy and Sarah, our old dog in the barn.  We spoiled him in other ways, trying to make him happy again, but he still searched for Hazel and seemed sad. 

Bugsy had been eating pretty well and he had taken to following me around in place of Hazel.  He loved to lay at my feet while I was in here in my office typing.   He has never walked well- even when younger.  He was dropped off at our place 15 years ago with rickets so bad he was bowlegged.  His brother Mugsy was dropped off at the same time and my sister took him.  He died 2 years ago.  They had been terribly mistreated, with cigarette burns and other scars and Mugsy’s jaw had been broken and healed.  They were only about 6 weeks old then.  But both had pretty good lives with us and with my sister.

We had noticed early last week that Bugsy wasn’t eating well.  Then Thursday I had to be gone most of the day at doctor’s appointments and Steve went with me.  When we got home we saw that Bugsy was in the same spot he was in when we left- a bed in the living room.  (We have dog beds throughout the house.)   A little later I tried to get him up and he seemed too weak to stand.  I changed his bed because it was wet and told Steve we would take him to the vet Friday to be put down.

On Friday however Bugsy was up and though he wouldn’t eat he drank well and followed me to the office.  I decided to wait and see what would happen and didn’t make the vet appt.  By late Friday evening I regretted that as he began whimpering and shaking, a sign he was in pain.  I fixed him a nice soft bed and sat by him all night; the only thing that soothed him was me stroking him. 

The closest emergency vet open at night is 50 miles away.  Every time I moved him to change his bed he cried in pain.  Since he was still a heavy dog for me to carry, I wouldn’t have been able to get him in a car easily and I knew he would be hurt even more.  He never liked cars either.  So all night I was up with him, stroking and talking to him, and giving him water from a syringe until he passed at 7 am.  It was a horrible night.  Steve buried him next to Hazel.  I warned the other dogs that if they quit eating they will go right to the vet. ( There's a picture of Bugsy in the Nov 20 blog entry.)

If there is a God that accepts dogs in heaven Bugsy is happy again, following his love Hazel around.  We will all be together again soon.