Animal House

A tale of the little green cottage, a wounded sasquatch, butterflies, a broody hen, a leaping stag, and a wild pony.

Life has been a little wild around here lately. The Engineer had his first surgery late last week, all went well and he is beginning to have less pain and hopefully beginning the healing. He's already talking about bowling again, "Sasquatch" is his bowling name and no, he wont be bowling with his injured hand, his bowling arm is just fine. It may still be some time before he's 'pickin' the banjo again though.

This last week the cottage has been taken over by animals. We had some caterpillars, we watched them turn into chrysalids and then watched them turn into painted lady butterflies. What an amazing process to see up close! I highly recommend doing this if you have some small ones at your house. Pony girl loves bugs and she completely loved watching them change and then letting them go. I did too! We ordered our caterpillars online from here.


That sweet girl there is Tweet Tweet, she is the most docile of our ladies and tolerates Pony Girl's shenanigans with great aplomb. This week I noticed some changes in her and it finally became clear that we have a 'broody hen' in our midst. A 'broody hen' is a hen that wants to set on the eggs until they hatch. The hen's body temperature rises and she will stay on the nest constantly. If she has no eggs of her own, she will often set on other hen's eggs. Now, we have no rooster in the hen house so...Tweet Tweet is setting on the ever unhatchable clutch, even when no eggs are present, she will not leave the nesting box poor dear. This can be a dangerous situation, even fatal, for sometimes a hen will not even leave the nest for food or water or to relieve herself. So, out I go 5-6 times a day to get her out of the nest, put her on cool ground to hopefully lower her body temp, make sure she is eating and drinking. This has not yet broken her broody and we may have to resort to moving her to a well ventilated cage away from the nest and her two gal pals.

Ah, the majesty of the leaping stag with the cuteness of a sweet fawn! I thought I would also share this wee dress that started the whole blue and orange business. This little number has been waiting around and chastising me all week for not finishing it. As I was making it up, I fell for the orange and blue combo big time! I'm hoping that the Fraulein and I will be spending some quality stitching time together this weekend and this dress will be leaping into my little shop.

No menagerie would be complete without a wild pony. Spring has her sprung with a herds worth of energy. Her enthusiasm unbridled, she jumps for joy and I can hardly keep up.

May you jump for joy this weekend and go wild!