New Babies

I walked over to the clotheslines this morning, and discovered another goose egg. For the past few days we've found our goose's eggs in various areas around the house. This goose lost her mate over the winter, and then attached herself to our dog, Samson.

A couple of weeks ago she managed to break one of her wings, and then disappeared. We thought she was dead for sure, until our youngest decided to check out why Samson was looking at something in the brush by the clotheslines. There was the goose! We've left her alone, but apparently during the night she comes out of hiding and deposits eggs for us. We now have five in the refrigerator, and it's time for some scrambled eggs. I'm thinking I better crack them outside, in case she pushed the ones she was sitting on out of the nest and by the clotheslines.

Our house has become a nursery for other things as well. Jonathan loaded up the incubator, and so far it's hatched approximately thirty chicks. During the night last week we had fifteen hatch, and was it ever smelly in here!


About 4:00 p.m. Jonathan decided that since it was a warm day he would take the chicks to the barn and place them under the heater so we could air out the house. We then left to do our neighbor's chores, and when we returned two hours later, we discovered fourteen of the chicks in the barn had died, leaving only one. The lesson we learned: Pay attention to what the directions state regarding farming matters, even if they don't list the reason why you should do something. Now we know why they need to be in the incubator for at least an entire day. We won't do that again! Since then another batch of ten has hatched, and we were much more careful with them. They were added to the bunch in the barn that we ordered -- all 120 of them. So far so good.

Two days ago we knew our favorite cat, Funny Face, was in labor and about to deliver. We had thought she would deliver at least two weeks ago, since she was so big. We decided to let her labor in peace, and left her to her own devices.

Well, she didn't deliver in her usual box, but decided to have them on top of Jim's garment bag that he uses when on trips! She was busy cleaning up four tiny black and white kittens. Later, when she was resting, we deposited them into her box that is located in the bathroom area.


A little while later, Andrew came out of the bathroom to announce Funny Face had just had three more kittens! No wonder she was so big. That made a total of seven babies. The most she has ever had was five, so she topped her previous record. We'll take some photos when they start looking like kittens.