I’ll start out with my wife, Lyn, who departed with 14 other folks for a two-week missions trip to Ecuador. From Indianapolis they flew to Miami, where they had a six-hour layover. The area that the group is visiting is 45 miles from a city that has cell towers. They are staying at a dormitory that has cots, electricity and running water ... but there is no hot water.
Lyn and some of her peers traveled to a larger city over the weekend, and I received a couple of emails from her. Things are going well with her, but she is looking forward to returning home. She asked how our animals were doing.
Our three chicken hens, whom Lyn cares for, have been making adjustments to their daily routines. One of the girls (Betty) is in the middle of a two-week brooding period, during which she does not lay eggs but will spend countless hours sitting on the eggs that the other hens have laid.
During my “caring for chickens” class that I attended just before Lyn left, she told me that I should just lift the brooding hen off of the eggs and pick them up. She said the chicken sometimes pecked at her but it was never hard.
My first attempt at getting the eggs that Betty was sitting on didn’t go well as she was pretty aggressive toward me. So I returned to the chicken house with a 3-foot wooden spatula, which I used to move her.
Stuart, our dog, also has struggled with Lyn being gone. He is not a fan of fireworks or thunderstorms. He has a “thunder jacket” and some calming pills that makes things a bit better. He always goes to Lyn when frightened by loud noises. He made a quick adjustment to me when it was apparent that she was not around.
As he ages he seems to get more upset by the loud explosions. A couple of evenings I put him in our car and drove for an hour or so while playing the radio loudly. He loves riding in the car, and he settled down nicely.
That leaves our famous neighborhood feline, Guessie. I suspect that he has house privileges at more than a half-dozen homes. He enjoys roaming all night during the summer and sleeping during the day. During cold weather he reverses this plan.
A few nights ago I provided dinner for Guessie and Stuart. Guessie then went to the door and I let him out to begin his overnight patrols. Stuart and I later called it a night and went to bed. Stuart curled up in his bed on the floor beside me. About 2:30 a.m. Guessie woke me by plucking at the screen of the bedroom window.
I got up and opened the front door for him to enter. He followed me to the bedroom and was complaining loudly. That got Stuart’s attention. As soon as Stuart understood that the cat was on the bed, he also joined us.
I spent the remainder of the night smashed between a dog and a cat. At 5 a.m. I gave up and fixed their breakfast. As soon as breakfast was over, we all jumped into our recliners and took our first nap of the day.
We can’t wait until Lyn gets home Saturday.