SneezingCow.com

Home of Michael Perry – Author, Humorist, Singer/Songwriter, Amateur Pig Farmer

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Archive for February, 2009

Rooster Booster

Our two brahma roosters have been banished to the woodshed. The charge? Sexual harassment. Half our hens are sporting bald patches from overuse, and now one of the more shabbily treated layers has expired – perhaps due to the ongoing over-aggressive overtures. Not sure, and no autopsy is scheduled, although the crows and coyotes will perform a thorough post mortem. I blame myself in that I believe we have a few too many chickens and too little coop to expect copacetic communal cohabitation through the long winter. The roosters are beautiful creatures, great big well-feathered boys, but we didn’t want them in the first place (a sexing error at the hatchery) and I can tell you they are destined for vittledom.

Knucklehead

Typing gingerly.  More on that later.

It was a digging out morning.  Zero degrees and all the heavy snow carved by a wind that pressed and howled the whole night through, abating only as the sun rose.  Some standard shoveling, a couple of sled-loads of firewood, a slight delay while I heated the starter so the plow truck would start, then that fun pioneering-lite moment where you drop the blade and blast through the unmarked drifts, out the driveway toward signs of civilization.  The heater blasting, the toddler jabbering in the car seat, waving her mittens and talking happy nonsense.

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Mike on Wisconsin Public Television

The crew from Wisconsin Public Television’s “Here And Now” rolled up here a while back and shot me yapping about winter.  Since then most all of the snow melted…until about two hours ago whereupon the white stuff came whomping down.  Yes, this was a whomping snow.  Heavy, wet, and wind-whipped.  Dropped on us like waterlogged goosedown.  Gotta plow the driveway in the morning, although that’s fun because I have two sweet blue-eyed co-pilots who treat the whole works like a cut-rate carnival ride.

In the meantime I’ve moved my EMS kit and reflective vest from the car to the plow truck in case the pager goes off in the dark hours.

Anyway, with the chicken coop all drifted in, it’s appropriate that the winter essay will air tomorrow night (and re-air Sunday).  Program times here.

Welcome to the new site.

We’ve been doing some housekeeping here.  Repainted and got new window treatments.  Still sticking with the iconic image of Mike picking his nose.  We find it meditative.

We expect there will be a few glitches in the early going and apologize in advance for any unanticipated speed bumps.

Please note we’ve now added RSS feeds so you can be alerted whenever the site is updated.

We’re also tooling up for the upcoming release of the new book.  COOP: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting is due out April 24.  Book tour events added as we receive them.