The Three P's: parasites, preventative care and perturbing your mother

Dearest Daughters,

These chickens will be the death of me.

Not really.

But, like I do for you, I love them and continue to care for them despite the toll they take on my body.

First, a digestive system parasite. Okay, not confirmed that it was from the chickens. But, I'm highly suspicious, given the correspondence of their introduction into our home and my introduction into the bathroom. (Note: beadle was out of town that week, my parents also left for a couple of days during that time, stranding me with my parasitic fever and two daughters).

Now, mites. That have been biting me the past month. That tricked me into thinking they were bedbugs, prohibiting me from sleeping for the better part of a week. (Note: beadle was ALSO gone during this traumatic week and my mom was sick and home bound, again leaving me stranded with yet more (real or imagined) parasites and two daughters. I detect a theme.)

And another thing, I had to make myself susceptible to not only further bites for these chickens, but also to pesticides, as Lolopop and I cleaned out the coop and spread Sevin dust around. (You were far far away in Lola's House Land.)

But, it's for their own good.

Well, at least there's the eggs. Except, not for the next few weeks. That's about 105 (or more) eggs, NINE DOZEN eggs, by my calculations, into the compost. Adios, huevos.

Those darn chickens.

It's not REALLY their fault though. It's the mites. No, it's the wild birds who brought the mites.

FINE. Shut up. It's my fault. If I wasn't such a noob chicken farmer, I might have known that I should be doing things to prevent mites. Like using Diatomaceous Earth (DE). I call it "Dinosaur Earth" because 1) it's basically old dirt and 2) that's easier to pronounce and 3) it annoys Lolopop. Like when I call a "ship" a "boat".

Which reminds me of a story.

The other day we were driving past the Port of San Francisco. I saw a HUGE ship. Like, SO HUGE. You couldn't miss it. Unless you're two years old and easily miss things like that. So, when I pointed out the "ship" to Babybel, what she saw was a "crane." I corrected her at the time and explained that "the tall things that look like ladders" are called "cranes" and not "ships." But, she didn't care. And every time we pass "the tall things that look like ladders" she says, "Look, Mommy! A ship!" Imagine that! A ship on the corner of 2nd and King! And another one in Downtown San Leandro helping to build the new parking garage!

Probably, you do this, to annoy me.

The moral of today's story: parasites suck (sometimes, literally), focus on preventative care, and flagrantly misuse the English language if you want to annoy Lolopop or your mother.

Love,

Comments

[daddy]

"Dinosaur earth" is fine with me - that's pretty much what it is. Well not literally from dinosaurs, but from really, really, really old microscopic living things that are/were in the ocean. I did have a problem with "dynamiceous" earth, although on second thought, that's not too bad either, since it is also used in dynamite.