Oh My Goodness, what a storm we had last nite. Not Joplin bad, not a tornado, but the worst severe storm i can remember for a very long time. So scary that the two legged kids and i spent a good thirty minutes in the interior bathroom with the cushions from the couch. Don't even remember the last time we did that.
The interior bathroom in my "Custome Home" has been under construction for the past three years. I call this palace "custome" because everything in it was hand made. Out of scraps. None of the cabinets or shelves are the same length or width, or are level, for that matter. Some day i am going to tell you some of the "custome home" stories, and why i am going to shoot the man that built it, if i ever see him. But that is not for today. The pertinent information today, is that the (fifth) toilet that Jed has tried to install in this bathroom is sitting over an open pipe, as new toilets are fitted differently than the toilets the builder had specially imported, presumably from an Eastern Block country during the cold war. Or from somewhere in the Ottoman Empire, perhaps. Lets just say there has been difficulty getting everything to line up. At least it is sitting on a floor now. The pier and beam inspections could be done from the bathroom for about a year, as the floor was nothing but studs and joists. During that time, we had a farm collie mix that was afraid of thunder. Every time we had lightning, Commando would go under the house and end up crying in the bathtub. We would bring him a bowl of water and toss him a bone, and he would ride out the storm. When Commando and Ruby started showing up in the bathtub looking for dinner, Jed got busy and put in the flooring.
Anyhoo, the kids and i are sitting in the bathroom, listening to the storm howl outside, and Jethro is really unnerved, shaking and praying. Took me about ten minutes to figure out that what was scaring him the most was the sound of the wind traveling thru the exposed toilet pipe. When i told him what the sound was, he did a visible sigh of relief. Poor little guy. He tends to shut down after and adrenaline rush, so when the immediate storm was over, he crashed and slept thru the rest of the events.
Of course the power went out, and was out for about 16 hours. So the rest of the story takes place in the dark. Storm lasted about 2 hours. We went out in the dark to go check on everybody. The poor goaties were traumatized. I walked into the doe barn to find Moon Pie standing in the middle crying like she was dying (of course,) and from the pile of babies, Splendora looked at me and gave a weak, sad little questioning "maaaaa" like, "Is it over, yet? Where were you an hour ago?" Everyone was nervous but fine. Same thing in the buck barn. Did a head count of rest of animals, and saw everyone except Jesse and Owens. Figured they got blown away, but this morning they were in the bovine hot tub, so all good there, too. Isabell and the Bobs were flustered but fine. The problem came when we got to the chickens. Everyone in the coop was fine, but the chick pens were devastated. We are running three pens of chicks, 34 all together, and there were three piles of bodies, with only two heads raised, doing the pre-death silent chirping. I thought they were all dead. Ellie called for towels and got to work sorting. Jed was home by this time and helped us dry those that were still alive. Of course there is no power, so no heat lamp to warm them. We all had chicks tucked in our undershirts until we ran out of room. I had been running two canners when the power went out, so i filled a hot water bottle out of one of the canners, and we put a bunch under towels with the bottle. Ellie took some to the coop and stowed them under a couple of hens known to be broody on occasion. I lifted the racks on both canners, we laid towels over the tops of the still warm jars, and put chicks on top of those. We worked on the chicks for about two hours, and as of this morning, only one more died, so we only lost a total of 8 chicks, which is phenomenal, given what they went through. But with our luck the ones that survived will all be roosters.
On one of the sorties, Ellie found a dove wedged in the fence, and came in with it sitting on her finger, doing a kind of Foster Brooks wobble (the dove, not Ellie.) Suddenly, it straightened, got a "how did i get here?" look, and took flight. No light in the house remember, and the poor thing hit the ceiling about six times before it realized it wasn't outside. Ellie captured him off of a high shelf, and he spent the night in the brooder house with most of the chicks. He was released this morning on personal recognisance.
Lots of limbs down, lots of flooding wash, some sheet metal loss, that kind of thing. But the Custome Home still stands, and no animal loss except the eight chicks.
We are feeling truly blessed, today
We now return to our regularly scheduled programing.
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