Her Side Funnies

I repeatedly mention that my husband is from Denver. It explains his innocence and gullibility and his resistance to accepting my core Redneck values.

Last spring we bought some chicks from the farm store. Buff Orpingtons. Golden Rolls Royce’s of the chicken world. They were cute. They were fuzzy. They quickly morphed into flapping balls of feathers coating the interior of the house with more dust than my liberal housekeeping policy allows.

A chicken house needed to be constructed, which brought the first of many misunderstandings between Ken and myself.

Ken believed that the chickens needed a far more “sturdy” home than I recognized from my childhood. My family’s chicken coop consisted of patchy chicken wire, baling string, a German Shepherd dog, and a door with a tricky latch that allowed cousins to be locked in the chicken coop for games of cowboys, Indians, robbers and jail until their mothers played squawk-n-swat, an unpopular farm game involving yelling and spanking. But, I digress. (more…)

Ken’s from the city.  He thought when I said I wanted fertilizer for the flower gardens that I meant for him to buy a bag of the stuff at the local garden center.  Silly Ken.

In the world of chickens, the Buff Orpington variety are big, fat hens that are hardy and lay brown eggs.  They are the Rolls Royce of chickens–in my humble opinion.  There are other breeds which are equally enchanting, but my personal pick are the Buffs.  They are docile and fun to watch.  We got them at the end of February and they promptly became dining room fixtures. 

Ken would come down from work for lunch and I would find him gazing into the make-shift water trough we were using to house the newly hatched chicks.  Soon, they exceeded my relaxed approach to housekeeping (with feathers and dust flying everywhere) and they had to be booted into the outdoor shed.  The cold nights made us nervous a couple of times, but the chicks did fine and continued to grow under the watchful eye of the dingo pup.  (more…)

For a complete index of Dani’s comical posts, click here.

I was busy trying to finish a building project that had consumed the garage bay, forcing me to leave my car outside, which, considering the condition of the fences, had the ever-present risk that I would find a goat on top of it. This is always a decidedly unhappy discovery.

Speaking of goats, I took several to the sale.  I needed Ben’s help and he ended up getting dragged halfway down the steep, rock-covered hillside leading to our house.  Poor kid.  I told him to grab the goat by a hind leg and when he did, the goat somehow wheeled around and kicked him in the crotch in some sort of goat karate move that surprised both Ben and me.  (I, for one, didn’t know the goats were studying karate.)  

The goat pictured above is a blue-collared (blue belt) in karate and is giving “the submit-or-I’ll-embarrass-you” stare.  She can flip, kick and humble an owner in less than eight seconds.  True black-collared goats can leave an owner wishing they were dead. (more…)

For those interested in the prior Grass Carp entry, click here.  For a complete index of Dani’s comical posts, click here.  *Before and after shots of the pond are shown at the end of this post.

The grass carp have been in the pond now since late August and I, the ever-optimistic one, assumed they would have already cleaned the pond by now and be ready to tackle the laundry, or vacuum my living room, or at least be sweeping the front stoop.  This, to my disappointment, is not the case. (Proof of abundant laundry shown at left.)

In looking out at the pond, I continued to see globs of crusty nasty glop floating atop the pond.  Asking husband Ken about this, he explained to me that while grass carp will clean the pond, they eat the yummy stuff first.  Crusty nasty glop floating on top of the pond, he assured me, is not that yummy.

I concede that point.

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As a special request, I am confessing to what amounts to a crime – destruction of property – at least according to Ken.

It started with the acquisition of, as Heidi put it, “an excellent, champion buck goat with a pedigree to die for.” She begged and pleaded. She pried and twisted. She swore that the only thing between her and goat fame was this one lonely buck goat. The answer to her prayers. She ultimately tormented her dad and I to allow her to buy “Pete.” (more…)