Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a visit.
The Toothless Soothsayer was going to be my post for today, but as I was working on it yesterday I accidently hit the ‘PUBLISH’ button and it became history.
It’s going to be a busy day here. It’s been almost a month since I’ve been to town for provisions and I’ve got a list two-pages long of things I’ve runned out of already, or that I’m down to bare bones on. The cats have been threatening to go on strike if I don’t get some other flavors of canned food, the chickens are fighting the cats for dry cat food, and the deer are complaining about what’s available to steal from the felines and chickens.
I thought I’d stocked up enough on the old kind of cheap lightbulbs, but the cheapo ones burn out a lot faster than a person might expect. I’m hoping I can find a few more on the shelves to snag before lightbulb-Y2K happens.
Most of you probably haven’t noticed what’s happened to the price of feed grains, but I expect you’ll be seeing it on the grocery shelves in the form of pricetags before long. The price of chicken scratch is up about 25 percent from sometime a while back, and layer pellets up almost that.
The flock is free ranging a lot further than they used to because I’ve cut down of how much I put out for them. It’s a tightrope, making sure they have enough to supplement their forage, but keeping it down to a level so’s they don’t waste it, which they’ll do. They’ve always been spoiled, profligate, ungrateful birds. But now they’re being driven by necessity to range out a quarter-mile, which is the idea behind free-rangers but too good for them to allow them to appreciate it.
A while back my laser mouse with a cord went out, and digging around I found a cordless one I’d never been satisfied with from several years ago. Out of hunger I put a couple of triple-A batteries in it and found it worked okay. Couldn’t recall why I’d abandoned it.
Then I discovered it goes through batteries something ugly. It’s a gas hog and I don’t think my need to have a cordless mouse is worth the price of keeping it on the road. Probably it’s going to be me tied to the comp at the end of a fiber-optic cord again.
If you’re travelling out in the vicinity of Grants, New Mexico, and you see the cat at the top of the page, tell her Hydrox, Niaid and I said hello. I doubt you’ll see her because she vanished in 2003 and we figured she’d joined Mehitabels #1 and #2 on permanent mouse patrol.
But you never know.
Old Jules
So Far From Heaven 
I’ve never commented but I love your stories and your thoughts. I’ve read every post since I started following about a month ago and I thoroughly enjoy what you’re doing in your corner of the internet. Looking forward to more.
And good luck with your plucky birds. I’ve heard Chickens can be divas.
Good morning mockinbbirddon’twrite: Thanks for coming by for a read. Glad to make your acquaintance. Gracias, Jules
Good one, Jules. Your bit about the cordless mouse reminds me of the TV commercial where everything is gas-powered. I have a picture in my head, now, of a mouse powered by a tiny internal combustion engine.
Mudinyeri: I visualize one with a pull/recoil starter like a chainsaw. And a kick starter when it goes communist. There’s a lot of merit to the idea. Gracias, Jules
I was trying to hit the “like” button and it wouldn’t work. Doing this on my Blackberry can be a real pain in the ass. Anyway, “LIKE”
Carrie: I don’t know nuthun about Blackberries except the seeds are a nuisance. Glad you enjoyed the post. Gracias, Jules
Good morning, Jules – we had a cat a few years ago that hopped the fence and went to live with the back-yard neighbors…she stopped-by a couple times to say hi…but then quit that too. We also had a tabby tom with six toes on his front paws that left for six or seven months and then one day jumped through the back window with a loud hello…ate a little bit, lounged around, let us pet and croon over him for a bit and then took off again. Figured he thought it was a big wide world out there and he didn’t want to miss any of it…don’t know that he would have made it to Grants, though….
seekraz: Twangs my heart strings the cats with too many toes. The Great Rumpuscat had toes running up and down all his legs and a bobtail. One fine fellow I still miss after a couple of decades. Yours evidently was a winner, also. Glad you shared it. Gracias, Jules
enjoyed your writing 😉
DanIrene: Thanks for stopping in. Gracias, Jules
This one is hilarious!
LCTC!: Thank you. Jules
Hi, Jules, something to say on the hungry mouse bit, maybe. If you run a PC, go to Mouse preferences and see if you have clicked the instruction which says something like. Start up mouse right away at switch on. Whatever the words the action is draining the batteries. I ran into that a while back. Keep posting.
Kristin: I’m obliged for the tip. I’ll give it a try. Gracias, Jules
Kitty looks like a Bengal…almost. Right tail, but no belly spots.
heretherebesiders: She had other traits not unlike Bengals. Gracias, Jules
This piece of writing about how to embed a YouTube video code is genuinely helpful for new internet users. Good employment, keep it up.
I know about those hungry chickens, mine ranged so far out into an empty snowy field that they had to keep sitting on their feet every few yards on the way home, they got so cold. Ah well, i fed them when they got back to the barn just to be nice! c
Hi ceciliag: Mine haven’t been in a lot of snow, but I don’t think they’d have as good sense as yours. Have you switched to milo? I compared prices today and bought 100# of milo because scratch has gone so high. I’m going to have some sulky critters out there. Layer pellets went up again, too. Gracias, Jules
Milo i shall look into it. My objective is to get food scraps from a local restaurant for the chooks and the pigs but they won’t do it. They think they will be sued or something.. all i want is the kitchen scraps they throw in their dumpster! weird.. c
ceciliag: I’m betting you could work out a way to get the discard veggies and maybe stale bread from the bakery if they have one. Might just be a matter of going higher on the chain of command, offering to leave a trailer out chained to a light pole by the dumpster and assure them you’ll pick it up, say, twice a weekk. But the meat scraps from the butcher shop would drive the chickens wild and be great for them, too.
I used to experiment with running prickly pear cactus through a food processor after burning off the tines, gave it to the chickens and it did pretty well for them. But the drought dried up all the prickly pear around here. I even ate some of it myself at the time. Jules
I’d have emailed you but alas, none to be found! I’ve left something for you on my blog- if you’d like it send me a message & I’ll mail it to you, http://artboy68project.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/72-so-far-from-heaven/
Fantastic blog, been following for awhile. It was my job to clean the chicken coop as a boy. I don’t think there’s anything worse in this world.
Fantastic!
heretherebespiders: Possibly, though premature. Gracias, Jules
Artboy: Thank you. I’m at loss for words, which doesn’t happen often. Gracias, Jules
Jules, I give milo and oats to my chickens. They love the milo and eat the oats when nothing else is available. Oats doesn’t put fat on them like corn does. I have tried wheat. Don’t know how it is on the nutrition for them. They seam to like it better than oats. I got it to sprout grain for them. Wheat, oats and milo gives three sprouted grains. They like the greens. It does take them a bit to figure out it is food as they haven’t seen anything green in a very long time. Especially enjoyed this blog. Chickens and mice are right up my alley.
Hi Mary. Thanks for coming by. The price of all the grains has gone up so much I’m just trolling for the cheapest to get by. I did use sprouts for a while, but for some reason I quit doing it. Don’t recall why. Gracias, Jules