New boat

 Using an electric pump connected to the cigarette lighter to pump it up.

 I carried the boat, Frederick carried the paddle.

 Down to the lake.

 Off we go!

 This is the life!

At the beach.

Halfway house for the ducklings

Coop II contd.

Ok, stage 2: time to get the inner walls and floor done.  That isn't an old rag in front of the coop, that's a black chick with white spots.  That's the one that looks more like a guinea fowl than a chicken.

Insulation, to keep their little chicken toes warm in winter.

I had to lay towels down when I was working inside the coop because whenever I went back to the garage to get something (which seemed to happen increasingly as the temps and humidity levels rose during the morning) the chickens would race into the coop and crap in it.  I now know why calling someone a "chicken shit" is really, really insulting: much worse than dog or cat shit.

And there it is, a floor.  Not the final floor, no sirree!  They are going to get flashing on the floor for easy clean up.  (Because crapping is all they do.)

See?  There one is, claiming the entire box as her own.  If they had their way, I'd be making 12 coops, one for each.  

Dinosaurs (with feathers! and cars!)

As long-time readers will know, the Sloan Museum periodically gets a visit from a traveling dinosaur exhibit.  Both our boys have enjoyed this at various stages in their lives (when Thomas was little, their animatronic savagery was a little much).  Well, it's come back, new (feathers!) and so expanded that it won't fit in the museum.  Fortunately, a nearby mall is still mostly empty following the crash of 2008 so there's plenty of room there.  Room enough to add the contents of the Buick Gallery, currently being refurbished. 

Various Summery Scenes

I just did a camera (phone) dump and here are some of the pictures that have been sitting on my phone for the past few weeks:

Grand Blanc Commons

The line of cars waiting to get into Seven Lakes one particularly sweltering weekend (so far our only lake swim - more to come no doubt)

Emily's car emerging from the grassy road down to her family's lakeside property (where Frederick spends a lot of time - he's certainly had plenty of lake swims without me).

People fishing in front of the newly-created (by finally demolishing a very old, long-condemned dam right next to UM-Flint campus) weir.  I can't believe people eat those fish - this is the Flint River, after all.

Pun

Part of my B'Day present to myself (with Grandpa money).

The Coop Progresses

Ok, the Ex Compost is not in place, with the sides reattached together and one of the front supports in place.

This is QUITE A FEW hours later, with both front supports in place, a new floor in place and the whole thing elevated onto cinder blocks.  Getting this far required a lot of back and forth between the chicken run and the garage, cutting boards, cutting them again, swapping out the drill battery, getting more screws, blah, blah, and each and every time I went in and out the chickens swarmed me, both excited and terrified about what I was doing.

They quickly realized that Coop 2 was THE place to hang out and moved right onto it.

This is Sinead, the chick that got caught in bird netting and was then attacked by her fellow chickens.  (That sounds weird, but it's basically exactly what happened: she got all wrapped up in bird netting, panicked, peeped like she was dying and (I suppose to speed along the process) her coop mates ran over to pecker her head.  I don't know if they were expressing hate for her tiresome squawking or trying to kindly quicken her death process.  I heard her screams and freed her from the netting, only to see the top of her head missing and immediately regretted everything--chickens, coops, everything.)  She was traumatized and her coop mates seemed slightly ashamed.  I painted tree sap paint (the stuff old people paint on tree stumps) on her head, sort of sweeping her neck feathers up and over her bald skull so the wound was entirely covered.  (Chickens peck at anything red, including wounds, so you have to paint up all injuries otherwise they pick, pick and pick until the chicken is just one big wound.  Nature is a wonderful thing, isn't it?)  We kept her separate that night in her own box and by morning she was feeling pretty spry, itching to get back with her mates.  After day 2 of isolation we let her rejoin the group, fearing for the worst.  But, amazingly, the black tar paint worked and she was left along, and slipped right back into the group.  The tar paint lasted about a week and a half, and last week I saw a shiny pink skin covered skull peeping out from among the neck and face feathers. It sort of looked like an avocado pit.  Yesterday I noticed feather stubble regrowing on her head.  She still looks like like a monstrous horror, but she doesn't know that and, apparently, the other chickens don't care.  (Just for reference, the chicken in the foreground is the same breed, with a full head of feathers, so you can see what Sinead is SUPPOSED to look like.  Some day, if she stays away from bird netting, she will be back to her full feathered self.)

From Compost Heap to Hen House

Given the possum incident of a while ago, we need to get the chicks moved into their own digs. Building the coop last year was, though interesting, a long drawn out ordeal and I have spent the past week weeks trying to think of a way to simplify (and cheapen) the process. Meanwhile, I have been thinking about moving the compost heap container from the corner to a space closer to the house, and closer to the chickens. Then Simon said those fateful words, "Why do we even need a compost box now given that we have 17 birds who eat all our compost?" And CLICK it hit me: turn the compost box into Coop 2! Since it has three perfectly strong sides, all I would have to do is build a floor, front door and roof--one week's work at best!  So today I started by clearing out a space within the chicken run for the new home.  Puddlenuts stands at the new work site, wondering what to make of it.

Here are the compost walls, all as good as new.  (That is some seriously well preserved treated wood.)

That's the last of the tree stump, waiting to be chopped up and hauled away.

Pretzel checks out the new work site, wondering what's going to go there.  An even BIGGER duck house, perchance?  One with an indoor sitz bath?  No.  Not a chance.