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Archive for the ‘Diary’ Category

Sign of the Times

Posted in Current Events, Diary, History, Tyranny, tagged , , , on May 8, 2026| 3 Comments »

If you are on Bluesky, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been around for the past few days; that’s because on Tuesday evening, some moderator over there decided I was a bad girl who needed her social media taken away to teach her a lesson about offending Trumpists.  I was scanning my timeline, getting ready to close the computer for the evening, when suddenly my screen sort of blipped and I was looking at a weird generic timeline, featuring stuff from nobody I follow; in the margin was a signin button.  I thought it was odd and went to sign back in, only to be told my account was suspended for violating the ToS by “hate speech”, and my account would be suspended until the 9th (no time was given).  They did tell me which post was the one which had provoked their fit of pearl-clutching; it was one which stated that Trump’s poll numbers were not yet bad enough, illustrated by this picture: 
I’ve used the same picture with a similar statement literally dozens of times, with absolutely no pushback, so it’s obvious that what actually happened was mass reporting by a gang of Trumpists offended by my being mean to their god-emperor.  But given that in the past Bluesky has been fairly resistant to that sort of thing, this rings an alarm bell for everyone using the site; it means not only that they’re now trying to establish more rigid censorship, but that there are now enough Trumpists over there to make a reporting-gang.  Bluesky’s block function is very aggressive; blocked accounts can’t see the blocker to engage in retaliatory reporting.  I’ve subscribed to several MAGA blocklists, to preemptively close off this exact risk, but clearly that is no longer sufficient because there are enough stealth Trumpists around (who haven’t yet been blocked) to organize a gang.

I have no suggestions about avoiding this, other than pointing out that the picture having actual dead people in it is probably what they took exception to.  I’m merely pointing out that mass reporting has obviously made it to Bluesky, and the Trumpists have access to the weapon.  According to their official email my account should be back sometime tomorrow, which means a ton of playing catch-up, and alas, the retirement of this useful image.

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Diary #827

Posted in Diary, tagged , on May 5, 2026| Leave a Comment »

At this time of year, the chickens tend to dominate the animal news in these diary columns, but they’re not really doing anything right now; this has been a rather timid brood, so I’m currently engaged in trying various maneuvers to coax them out during the days, so they’re used to it before I kick them out of the nursery for good a week from Sunday.  Axel is doing well; as of Friday I cut his trazodone in half again, down to 12.5 mg/day, a mere 3.125% of the dose he started with at the end of November.  The only really noticeable difference in his behavior is that he seems a lot more attention-starved since I cut him down to 25 mg at the beginning of April, but I’m sure he’ll adjust, and I hope to have him off of the meds entirely by the end of spring.  Last Saturday I caught Lilith sunbathing on the atrium roof, but by the time I got downstairs to grab my phone and back upstairs, she had decided to get up.  She has become the main pest control cat now that Rocky is getting old (I believe he’s ten now), and I often see her ranging around the area, from the roof to the atrium to the basement to the paddock, and even out on the driveway.  Several times a week I find that she’s left me tribute of a dead mole or mouse, and last Friday I went out in the morning to find a rather large and rather dead rat right in front of my boots; I’m glad she rids me of vermin, but I must admit it was a bit startling to encounter a dead rodent nearly as large as my foot before breakfast.  The only real complaint I have is that I wish she wouldn’t devour birds in the atrium, because it leaves a mess of feathers sprinkled with unidentifiable but definitely avian offal that I then have to vacuum up.  I was concerned she might attack the pullets, but they’re nearly as big as hens now so I think they’re safe, even though I’ve actually found her in the henhouse a few times.

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Diary #826

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on April 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Though I’ve opened the nursery every morning for over a week now, the pullets are still largely uninterested in coming out yet. This is not unusual; there was a flurry of activity on the first day which resulted in one of the pullets going missing, but since then they have stayed where they feel safe.  That includes the missing one; Wednesday I needed to drive into Seattle, so I planned to let them stay in the nursery that day. But when I went out to check their food and water, whom should I find wandering around the chicken yard but the missing pullet, very hungry and very vocal, but otherwise none the worse for wear.  I was able to catch her and put her in with the others, and there she has stayed since.  I have no idea where she went; I spent over an hour looking for her the day she vanished, to no avail.  My best guess is that she managed to get through the narrow gap under the ramp and had been hiding under the house for three days; even though I crawled under there with a flashlight as part of the search, it’s a large area and even a thorough, hours-long search wouldn’t have sufficed to peer into every space under there large enough for a pullet.  I’m just glad I didn’t lose her, and choose to view her mysterious return as a good omen for this year.

 

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Diary #825

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on April 21, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Somehow, within three hours of letting the pullets out on Sunday, one of them managed to vanish.  As you can see, one hasn’t left the nursery and two are huddled in the corner fretting (not an unusual behavior for the first week or so after they’re out).  The turkey chick is more bold, wandering around the entire chicken yard.  But there’s no sign of the fourth pullet.  She’s not anywhere in the chicken yard, nor nearby outside, nor under the house, and I neither heard a ruckus nor found feathers which would indicate that something got her.  My guess is that she managed to fly over the fence and ran off to hide in the underbrush, but I have no evidence for that; I reckon it’s just one of those things that happens when one keeps poultry.

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Diary #824

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on April 14, 2026| Leave a Comment »

For the past two weeks, the pullets have lived in their nursery in the henhouse; the heat lamp is still on 24 hours a day, and every day about noon or so I top off their food and change their water.  This was taken immediately after doing that, which is why you can hear the water burping as the tray fills up.  The reason it’s up on the cinder block is to keep them from clogging it up with shavings when they scratch; at this stage it’s the feeder which gets clogged instead, but as long as I clean it once a day it isn’t bad enough to stop them from eating.  You can see that the turkey chick has now caught up with the pullets, and by the time they’re out of the nursery completely on May 17th, it will be noticeably larger.  The next change, however, will be this coming Sunday; the heat lamp will go on the timer so it’s only on at night, and in the daytime I’ll open up the coop as it is in this video, then herd them back inside every evening.  Every two days I’ll shorten the timer by half an hour, so their hours of darkness will slowly increase until it’s time to shut off the lamp for the summer, and by that time the hens will have stopped trying to harass them, and we’ll be settled into our routine until it starts to change again in late September.

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Diary #823

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on April 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »

As you can see, the chicks are in the nursery now.  And even though the turkey is two weeks younger than the chickens, she’s nearly as big already.  They’ll be confined full-time for two more weeks, then starting on the 19th they’ll be allowed to roam around the chicken yard during the day and only confined at night.  Since they’re faster than the adult hens they can get away from aggressive hens in the daytime, whereas at night the door is closed so they’re cooped up in a small space.  But after being near them for seven weeks, the adults generally lose interest, so I don’t have a pecking problem.  And despite the turkey being younger, her (?) size will soon protect her.

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Diary #822

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on March 31, 2026| Leave a Comment »

As you can see, Axel and Speck are now friends.  I can’t really claim any credit; Speck was the one who made all the overtures and slowly got him used to her presence.  I apologize for this being a poorly-composed picture; that lump under the blanket is my leg, so if I’d tried to get up to catch the shot from a different angle, they might’ve moved.  Alas, Axel has not stopped being aggressive altogether; a few days ago a stray cat came into the atrium and if I hadn’t called him off it would not have been pretty.  But one step at a time; at least he leaves the resident cats alone.  He is now down to 50 mg of trazodone per day, in a single dose at bedtime; that’s a lot lower than what he was on when he arrived in late November, but it’s still quite high considering he’s on a typical human dose despite having only about a quarter of a typical human body mass.  Even so, I’m going to keep weaning him off of it slowly; since I stopped splitting the dose between afternoon and bedtime I’ve noticed he’s a bit more antsy in the afternoons, so just cutting him off would still be a bad idea.  His next reduction will be this coming Sunday, down to 25 mg, so we’ll see how that works out and proceed accordingly.

In chick news, I typically keep them inside for three weeks, so they should’ve gone out into the henhouse nursery on Sunday.  However, the turkey chick is two weeks younger than the others, and the predicted low on Sunday night was -4o C, so I held off on putting them outside until today (it was only a one-night cold snap).  So watch next week for a video of them in the newly-rebuilt nursery, where they’ll spend the next three weeks before I start letting them out in the daytime to mix with the adult hens.

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Diary #821

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on March 24, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Yellowbird wanted to try turkeys again, and they came in Friday so Chekhov brought them over.  Unfortunately, by the next day one of them wasn’t doing too well; she seemed uninterested in the food or water even though the other one went right for them.  By Saturday evening she was obviously dying, and before 10 PM she was gone; given that like chickens she was living on her yolk until Thursday, my guess is that she had some disorder that kept her from eating as normal.  The other one has joined the other chicks, and though she’s smaller right now last year’s experience demonstrated that won’t be for very long.  On Sunday I expanded the enclosure, which will give them more room to run around and should help to keep their water from constantly getting fouled; I was lucky enough to catch them in the act in this video, so you can see how the water needs to be cleaned so often at this stage of development.  This coming Sunday they’ll be going out into their nursery in the henhouse; this past Sunday I finished mucking out the floor, bringing in fresh hay, rebuilding the nursery (the old chicken wire had corroded badly in our damp climate), and spreading fresh shavings in there so it will be ready for them this weekend.  So tune in next week at this same time for a look at the new nursery and its quickly-growing occupants!

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Diary #820

Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , on March 17, 2026| Leave a Comment »

If you’ve never had another living creature under your care, you may never have considered how much time and effort is spent dealing with their poop.  Babies need to be changed several times a day, and if you’re in a city dogs need to be walked (out in the country they just let us know when they want to go outside); cat boxes need to be cleaned about twice a week, and henhouses need to be “mucked out” twice a year.  That means using a shovel to remove all the “poultry litter”, which is merely a concise term for the revolting mixture of decaying hay or shavings, molted feathers, spilled food, and fecal matter which builds up on the floor over time.  I generally do it in March before I get the nursery ready, then again in September or early October as it begins to turn cold.  But when I did it last autumn it really wore me out (like any shovel work, it’s rather strenuous), so a couple of weeks ago I decided to start filling just one bucket every day (when I go in to check feed & water and collect eggs) and dumping it on the compost heap; that way the work is spread out so as to be less exhausting and less odious.  While the chicks are still in the brooder, their poops are generally so tiny it’s no big deal to clean the shavings every week for the three weeks they’re inside; once in a while a chick gets a turd stuck to her butt-feathers, but it’s typically easily removed with fingernails (if you’re a parent you’ve touched worse, and there is such a thing as “soap” when the task is done).  But this time one of the chicks arrived with a hardened mass of feces; I’m told this is called “pasty butt” and it can actually kill them if not removed, because their vent gets clogged.  And it’s not easy to remove; it’s so hard and baby chicks are so fragile that one can’t simply pull it off, which means filling a basin with warm water and dipping her butt into it to soften the mess before removal.  Once I was done I got to see and hear something one doesn’t encounter every day: a chick fart, as she squatted and emptied her chute with an audible “poot”.  It has been a week since then and she seems fine now, so I think we’re past the danger. And I’m sure y’all enjoyed this fascinating discussion of literal chickenshit, so it’s a win all around.

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Diary #819

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on March 10, 2026| 4 Comments »

It’s chick time again! I used to get my chicks at Tractor Supply, but they do first come, first served and a lot more people are buying chicks in the past few years than there used to be, so now I’m ordering them from the feed store over in the county seat.  This year I got four Rhode Island reds; regular readers know I rotate the colors to make it easy to keep track of their ages (because chickens only lay for 2-3 years).  Technically, last year should’ve been reds, but at the time I still had two reds and only one white, so I got whites last year (and the last one died a few months ago).  Our last red died just recently, so it worked out almost perfectly; next year should be some dark color, though these blacks turned out to be disappointing layers, so I’ll need to do a little research on which dark-colored breeds lay as well as the reds and whites.  But one way or the other, chick season always makes me smile every time I go into the bathroom where they live, and sometimes when it’s quiet I can hear their peeping through a closed door and all the way in the living room.

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