June 25 2017
This week has been
hard. The first challenge was the
sick chick that has been sharing the house with me. I had found her on her back being attacked by the other chicks
and when I moved them she still could not get up onto her legs. I could not find any obvious broken
bones so I hoped her condition was temporary and that she would recover with a
bit of extra care. Sadly she just
got worse and several times a day she would end up stuck on her back cheeping
for help. Her condition continued
to get worse so I began to realise that I had to kill her to stop the
suffering.
I have to confess that
euthanizing terminal cases is always Edd’s job because I chicken out. However,
with Edd not being expected back for two weeks I had to do something. For several
days I weighed up options. I have
never wrung a bird’s neck and was not sure I could do it properly. I was also not sure about the ethics of
drowning or suffocating. On the
plus side I am accurate with a hatchet because I chop kindling every night so
in the end I decided decapitation was my best bet. I did the deadly job very
fast but I hated killing the one living being I have been sharing my life with
for the last month.
The chicken box was
too heavy for me to move by myself so for several days my eyes were immediately
drawn to it every time I passed because I was in the habit of checking the
chick and could even hear her at night if she called out for help. That feeling is easing now, thank
goodness. The next drama was my good friends grandson who had a suicide
attempt. As a society, in our
community and beyond we are totally failing some of our young people. I feel I need to learn a lot more about
this situation.
The week’s problems
did not end there. The goats needed fresh straw in their pen and the only bales
left were right at the top of the haystack in the shed. I have a knee that is not functioning
too well and then there is the gumboot problem. To do the animals I need waterproof foot wear. It is easy to
buy nice looking, comfortable, boots that flex well and make walking easier but
sadly they do not stay waterproof for more that a couple of months and then I
have to revert to heavier less flexible boots that make walking much harder to
say nothing about mountaineering up hay stacks.
With this in mind I
climbed very carefully and took no risks whilst rolling bales to the edge to
the stack and pushing them over towards the ground. I descended with equal care
but my foot slipped between the last two bales so that I was tipped over
backwards. I managed to get my right hand out behind me to break my fall but I
was still winded. Later that day my hand became very painful and I could not
even hold a toothbrush.
For the last few days
Bo has come over after work and looked after things but I think I can now take
over again. I milked this morning and my hand is still Ok. Another friend is
back from holiday and she came over too so today has been much better all
round.
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