Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

It has been kind of a weird couple of weeks here on the farm. After the mowing episode last week, the second mowing has taken place which seemed to go better than the first, but I’ve still not conquered the random limbs and sticks around the yard. I’ve also spent a little more time home in the daylight, not much mind you, but a little and in those rare moments I’ve taken to feeding the momma cat that has wandered back around. She’s in her second year here at the farm and comes and goes as she pleases and to be quite honest after she lost her entire litter of kittens last year I wasn’t sure she was momma kitty material.

She usually greets me in the evenings waiting for me to come home and runs to the door before I can even get my keys out of my pocket waiting for her daily dose of dry cat food. Fred, the neighborhood rooster also tends to wander out of whatever part of Hell he resides in about the same time and then there is a standoff as they both work on the food pile until it is gone. Some evenings this is quite a show, while other times I’m too tired to really care and go to bed listening to hissing and the slow chicken cluck that comes just before a big fight.

Fred, who ended up here as part of a larger group of eggs that were hatched at the school, is the only chicken left out of that group. Why he made it longer than the rest is beyond me because to be quite honest I’ve kind of left him to fend for himself. You see, Fred is a certified, grade A, number one jerk of a chicken. He is part guard dog, part MMA fighter and although he pretends to be happy to see me when I get home, he has, as of late taken to giving me a swift thump on the back of the legs as soon as I have passed by him. I can’t say that I’m a fan of this action and I’m sure that at some point it’s going to lead to his early demise. I’m also quite certain that anyone watching me trying to reprimand him probably thinks it looks pretty crazy. The part that most worries me is that in the back of my head when I’m scolding him I wonder if he sees me as another rooster and that my lack of tolerance with him is seen as a sign of aggression. I do not under any circumstance need to be attacked by a chicken defending his territory.

Back to momma kitty, I found that she has succeeded this year in celebrating Mother’s Day with the addition of two little calico balls of fur. She is extremely protective of them, which now explains why she is friendly at the door, but doesn’t like me to follow her around. I’m sure that her display of nurturing her young is also not lost on Fred as he tends to keep a pretty wide circle around her, although he is dumb and tends to forget which leads to more hissing and further standoffs. All in all, it is a comforting sign to have something to come home to at the end of a long day, even if they only want me around for abuse and a free meal. I guess it could be worse. See you next week…remember, we’re all in this together.