Recirculating Cheese

No riding yesterday, because of the rain, the rain, the rain, so we ran errands. Kylie has been in rodent withdrawal since the baby rats went home, and the degus went to the classroom, so we got 4 young female white mice. The Petco girl seemed kind of unpromising at first, but took her time picking out mices that were active (but not jumpy), healthy, clean, etc. Kylie is happy, the mice are happy, and the cats are happy that we have the mouse channel again.

Today I got to the barn just after the trailer left for the Halloween Parade in Woburn, which I'd plain forgotten about. I wasn't going to ride in it, but it might have been fun to watch. Oh well.

Cheyenne has a big bare patch on his left rear leg - it's dry, it's not inflamed, and the hair around it isn't loose, so I don't know what's going on.

There was a big mountain bike event in the forest this afternoon, so we had to keep dodging bikes. We mostly kept to the fire roads and larger paths, where we could pass bikes easily, and a few of the smaller paths that were not marked for an event route. Naturally, the folks setting out the bike routes like the same paths we do, so we spent a lot of time on alternate routes, that we don't usually ride. e.g. There's a little beach and picnic area on one of the larger ponds, which is closed to horses during the summer, so we went there, and even went into the water. It was a good ride overall, but I kept him below the out-of-hand gallop he likes so well.

Afterwards, I cleaned the stalls, and swept the tack room - not chores I usually do, but I thought they'd appreciate coming home from the parade to a reasonbly clean barn. And I got out of there before they returned, so it could be anonymous.

Made carrot/eggplant soup for dinner, and it was yum.

We went to the MSPCA shelter to get chickens, and came home with mice instead.

Went to check on the exiled meece family this morning. The nest was still where we'd dumped it, at the edge of the brush pile. As we approached, the whole nest started trembling, and out popped momma, with three baby mice still latched on. She scarpered further up and further in, dragging the babies along, bump, bump, bump. I moved the nest as far in as I could manage without disturbing the brush pile, and wished them all good health.

The only episode of The Prisoner I ever saw was "Many Happy Returns." Number Six escapes from the Village somehow, gets back to England, and contacts the military or Intelligence or something. They fly him around the coastline for hours; when he finally spots the Village, the pilot turns out to be one of Them, and the Prisoner is ejected from the plane, and parachutes right back into the Village.

I put the trap inside the closet, where the heating pipes come through the wall, and baited it with oatmeal ('cause mice can't resist oatmeal). Sure enough, the little bugger shimmied through the wall, couldn't resiste the oatmeal, and was waiting for me when I got back from riding. When he got back into his cage, he ran and ran and ran on his wheel.

+1. After working in Nashua for something like 5 years, I noticed for first time today that the park near work has an outdoor skating rink. And of course my skates are in the trunk of my car, so I can go skating before, after, or during work. w00t!

-2. Kylie's male mouse died today. It wasn't like the female with the giant-ass tumor on her ass, who we weren't expecting to see Thanksgiving, but who survived past Christmas. No, this one had a heart attack while shoveling snow, or something like that.

~3. I just got my first email ever from my mother. It was a perfectly ordinary email, but it was a great disturbance in the force. I mean, she's 72, and she doesn't do email.

=4. At the beginning of the winter, Francie bought a humidifier with a 5-gallon reservoir and a digital hygrometer. Naturally, it ran dry over the weekend, and so did the house. 36 hours and 8 gallons later, we've hauled the humidity from 25% up to an almost acceptable 40%. (Incidentally, this is the first winter I can remember where my hands have not cracked horribly and painfully.)

Went to the MSCPCA farm yesterday, and got two more hens. We're looking for chickens who are a) female, b) quiet, c) friendly, and d) pretty, which is limiting, but less limiting than you might think. Even the SPCA wants to place pairs and trios (rooster with one or two hens, respectively), but they understand that we can't have roosters, even friendly, cute ones. (The very very friendly bantam rooster was still there.)

The morning light is harsh, and I should have waited to take pictures. The hen on the left is an Ameraucana, which is reputed to lay blue eggs; the hen on the left is a mille-fleur Belgian d'Uccle. So now, through no fault of our own, we have two bearded Belgian bantams. The new mille-fleur is low hen in the pecking order. The other two (smallest and largest) are sorting out who's top hen.

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In the mouse department, Number Six is totally grooving on the exercise wheel. She'll sometimes sit in the wheel for hours on end. But when she starts running, it's usually at a dead sprint. She can't maintain the pace for long, and the wheel has some momentum, so she gets spun around, and usually flipped out of the wheel (and gets right back in and does it again).

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Went riding today on a borrowed Australian saddle. This is sort of a cross between an English and a Western saddle. It can be ridden with either English or Western stirrups, English or Western bridle. In any case, it's ridden with long leg, like dressage or Western, with your weight back, and pelvis cupped forward a bit. When you trot, you post straight up and down, like in dressage, not thrusting your hips, as in Hunt Seat, as I was taught, lo these many years ago.

Whether it was the saddle or the biomechanics, Cheyenne responded really well to it. He gave me the best, most collected trot and canter I've ever had on him. I have to try this saddle again. I also need to try his western saddle. (When we went to the beach last week, I used Elaine's western saddle, which weighs a ton. In contrast, he came with a Wintec western saddle, which probably weighs no more than an English saddle.)

In lighter news, we finally caught another mouse, even wee-er than the last two. This one is pretty clearly female (vaginal opening, close distance from anus to genitals). More to the point, it's soooo cuuuute. I put it in the aquarium, and brought it upstairs. Lucinda (the formerly-feral former kitten) is fascinated.

This un is a young un. I wonder if she will domesticate. And if we can breed her to the male domestic mouse, to make a more sturdy hybrid.

It's been 48 hours since we caught the last mouse, and it look slike that may be It. It was another young'un, and I entertained the notion of keeping it as a pet, but it just didn't have as much personality as the previous one. I put it in an aquarium, and brought it up to the kitchen, and it just sat there while the cats prowled around it. So, without heavy hearts, we took it out to the meadow in the state forest, and let it rejoin its family.

Let's hope that's the end of that.

We caught the first two mice on the overnight shift. This one wandered in at dinnertime, shortly after I'd re-set it. We moved it to an aquarium (with plushy bedding, food, and water), and re-set the trap for other brother Daryl. Besides, it's got to be better than spending the night in a metal trap.

It was pretty agitated at first, jumping from the floor of the tank to the top of the water bottle. (Domestic mice just don't do that - if I left them on a table top, they'd still be there an hour later, because they won't jump farther than they can reach.) When it calmed down a little, it tried walking on the underside of the screen lid of the tank (and showed us that it's male). Eventually it calmed down enough to do what captive mice do best (sit and wait), and I was able to get a picture.

Cute vermin, exhibit 1:

So there's a mouse (or mice) living in the ceiling of the basement. Inspired by this account of trapping mice in a Habitrail, we set up a spare cage with a tubing entrance, cushy bedding, a wheel - everything a mouse might want. Ungrateful wretch ate the food, drank the water, but never stayed the night. However, this acclimated him to coming into the cage, so we set a live-catch trap inside the cage. This morning, caged mouse inside a cage. Cute thing, with a brown back, white belly, little pink feet, and biiiig black eyes. I mean, totally manga eyes. On the way to school, we freed him in a sunny meadow in the state forest, and watched him poing away. Then we went home, and set the trap again, in case he has a brother.

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We didn't get chickens this weekend. I know, neither did you, but we were actually planning to. On Saturday, we went to Nevins Farm, the MSPCA's farm-animal shelter in Methuen. They have plenty of birds (plus goats, pigs, cows, llamas, and horses), but we didn't bring the requisite photos of our chicken house, so we were Just Looking. There were two who were especially friendly. One was a young buff bantam that we thought might be a male, but couldn't tell for sure. We can't have a rooster, which is a shame, because I even got this one to stand on my shoulder (every pirate captain needs a bird on the shoulder). The other was a buff Orpington hen, who practically fell asleep in my arms. Both birds are on hold to the same person, but she hasn't picked them up for a couple weeks, so we may have a shot at the hen. Orpington, Orpington. I just like to say Orpington.

There was also a flock of guinea fowl, which look kind of neat, and eat their weight in ticks (a consideration when you live on the edge of the woods), but are noisier than Harley Davidsons. One of them had gotten outside its enclosure, and was distressed that it couldn't get back in. And this upset the rest of the flock, and they all had to discuss it at once.

On Sunday, we went to the Future Farmers of America poultry auction at the fairground. You'd think that we'd be able to buy chickens at the poultry auction, but mostly they were selling roosters or pairs (rooster + hen). Plus rabbits, ducks, geese, pigeons, turkeys, pumpkins, and cookies. It was cold, and the few hens that came up weren't really what we were looking for, so we left empty-handed. So we go with some combination of rescue birds from the shelter, dealing directly with one of the breeders, or whatever comes up at the Poultry Show in a couple weeks.