Ducks 5, roosters 0

Well I can now sleep in. The squaking has abated, but it took some work. The last 4 roosters (the gay ones) have found a new home. They were destened to go the way of the other four (ie. the dumpling pot), but what with the recient sugery and all, I just wasn't up to chopping, gutting and plucking the rowdy little rascals. Then we met the russians on the corner. They have a mess of chickens and ducks, so we asked them if they wanted four roosters for free. It took a lot of gestuering and simple words and even help from the kids, but Lydia finally got the point that we didn't want anything in retrun, they just had to come over and bag the feathered thugs. Lydia showed up the next day, but was scared off by the Mongo Beast. Mrs. Whipple and I didn't know this so we were getting anxious and just nabed a couple birds when they were roosting on the fence and took them over to the russians. They came back home with us and we got one more, but the fourth one made good his excape into the neighbors yard and split for the tall grass. Curses! Foiled again!

Next morning his alarm went off on schedule. Of course his ex-pals could hear him all the way down at the russians house, so by nightfall three of the four were helping themselves to all the duck food they could down. Once more, into the breach. Lydia came back over with Vanya this time and with a net. He expertly bagged them all. I showed him how to clip thier wings, but I suspect that now that all the turkey leftovers are eaten up, they have met their maker in chicken heaven. Rest in peace.

On another note, the duckie flock is up by two. We met a nice lady at the feed store who was trying to get rid of a couple of hens that should start laying soon. That brings the duckies up to five. I guess what goes around comes back around one way or another

Guts ripped out in a three-fer

It all started out as a tummy ache in the middle of the night. Then it got worse. A lot worse. Next thing I know, I am on the internet looking up "navel pain".

It turns out that if you have apendecitis, there is a spot just southwest of your bellybutton that will hurt like the bad place if you push it, and more when you let go. OK so it hurt. Not so bad on the let go part, but it hurt. Now for the tough decision. Do I wake up Mrs. Whipple and haul down the the ER at 2AM, or tough it out till morning just in case it is only gas. I decided to tough it out until I rolled over in bed and felt like I got stabbed in the belly button with a dull kniting needle weilded by a rabid mule.

So it was off the the ER, not an uncommon drill at the funny farm, what with heart attacks and migrane and all. Mrs. Whipple even has a kit of stuff that she takes along. A pillow (for her), a book, some cross-stich, stickers for the cranky kids that you always run into in the ER, and of course coins for the Pepsi machine. They poked me and prodded by tummy. It turns out that every one has to get in on the poking, the nurses the doctors, the interns, the lady from housekeeping even gave it a shot. Everybody was of the opinion that it was indeed an apendex gone over to the other side. Except for Chris. Chris was a nurse, and not a cute as you may think Chris was six foot-two and had a beard. He thought it was gall blader, based on his three days of experince reading CAT Scans. This of course came as a supprise to the real doc, who said that yes, I did have some gall stones, but that was not what was causing all the fuss.

By this time it was almost dawn and Mrs. Whipple was about to blow a gasket. Nurses doing diagnoses was more than she could take. The ER doc wanted me to chat with my own doc, to decide on how much to chop out, so Chris cut us loose with the wrong records and lab tests. Mrs. Whipple was to the forrth level tizzy stage at this point, but she had to go to work anyway. It was casual friday so her jammy ensemble almost fit in at the office. Lovely purple sweats and a pullover sweater, with contrasting tennies. (I had the good sense to wear real clothes to the ER.) Nobody had to wory much about me. The ER doc had given me enough Morphine in my IV to down a mule and even gave me a six-pack of Vikiden to go, so I kept myself pretty much amused for the day counting my toes and picking my nose.

By the time we got in to see my doc, I was in very little pain. Except for the part when he lined up his whole staff to poke my tummy. He made a few faces and called the surgeon. "We can't take chances with you diabetic guys, you know" he said in his east Indian lilt. He was all for snatching the gall blader while we were in there. So it was back to the hospital. The surgeon, Dr. Rajagopal met us in the loby, and in a cost-saving move not often seen in western medicine, slipped me into the hall where he poked my belly on an unused gurney. Of course he had to let three nurses, a janitor and a visitor that happend by, poke too, but by this time I had it figured out that it was some deep seated custom of the medical profession to let all commers have a poke or two.
Before we knew it we were up in pre-op with a whole new cast of tummy-pokers. I was looking foward to the drug induced nap that I knew was comming soon.

Comming out of anasethia is a real trip. My IV pump was beeping so I was compelled to launch into a couple of stanzas of "The Bells" by Edgar Allen Poe. "hear the tinkling of the bells, silver bells, what a melody of meriment thier somthing somthing fortels" . I tried to keep the gigling and sluring down to a minimun, but I don't think I was too successfull. Then they dropped the bomb. They not only took out my apendex and gall bladder, they fixed a hernia while they were at it. I had tried in vain to sign up for the liposuction option, but they wouldn't go for it. Sometimes you just can't trust theese docs. They will rant on about how I have to loose weight or face another heart attack but when they have a chance to let me drop forty pounds to a vaccum cleaner they bail and do a three-fer that includes a crummy hernea fix. At least they gave me all the morphine I could handle and a bunch of Vikiden to take home.

More death

This time it isn't so funny. My beloved hen duckie Pippy died. She was a great layer. No kidding, eggs as big as my fist, often with double yolks. It was raining and she went into convutlions and died an hour later. We think it was avain cholera, or duck plague. The other three seem fine. And now Earnistina is either hiding her eggs, or not laying. I miss the eggs.

Death and carnage at the funny farm

OK, so the roosters finally got on my last nerve! And of course I love the duckies more. But hey, they lied to me at the feed store. Half of them were suposed to be hens. You know, full of eggs and stuff like that. Not theese squwaking lunitics that get up before dawn to anounce that the street light is now on. So I plead insanity on the four counts of murder and mayhem (in a vain attempt to mitigate my crime I spared four of the little buggers that looked a bit more hennish that the other four, turns out that they were just gay)
The dumplings though, were great.