That's right -- I sold empty wasp nests !!!

 I originally had four lots of them, with 1 to 4 nests per lot, depending on size.  

Sold them all. 

So I'm sold out until spring, when I climb up to get the ones under my house eaves before I paint.

Who buys them? Science teachers, insect collectors, budding young entomologists.

I got the last batch out of the loft above my chicken coop after the frost killed the wasp colonies. 

As the motto says, Whatever IT is, you can get IT on eBay!

We dodged the bullet all winter -- Until now

The big storm is continuing as we speak

Well, I guess I got what I asked for -- snow!  All winter long I've complained we didn't get any -- and now we have a blizzard.  I'm finally going to have to drag out that "useless" snowblower -- one of those machines that you don't use very often, but when you need it, you NEED IT!!!  Good thing I bought fresh gas for it on Friday.

This is a picture of my house -- that blob in front of the sliding doors is the front steps. (This is the south side of the house.  Oddly, the wind was blowing so hard from the northwest in back, that the back steps were almost clear -- the snow drifted all over my car and buried it instead.  The snow on the steps here came sailing off the roof.)

In the flat places, we've already got 8 inches and counting.   We are not getting the slushy stuff they have further south in the Twin Cities -- up here, it's the powdery kind that keeps blowing and drifting.  And that wind is STRONG !

This is a picture of my chicken coop -- where everybody is safely snug inside.  Yesterday I even put down a new layer of straw, because the floor was getting covered with frozen goose poop.  (What a mess when the Big Thaw comes!)  That slanted thing is the passive solar collector -- which I leave snow covered until the sun comes out, because snow is a pretty good insulator in a storm. 

I haven't tromped down there yet to feed and water -- will do that after breakfast when I clear a path.

So -- how's your weather?  (Be sure to tell us WHERE you are...) 

Goodbye, Rocky Rooster....

My oldest rooster, Rocky, crossed the Rainbow Bridge Saturday night and went to that great chicken flock in the sky.  It was expected, he was going on 8 years old which is old for a chicken.  In the last couple weeks he was getting rather withdrawn and lethargic -- a sign of old age.  The cold may have helped him go to sleep, but he was ready to go.   I found him lying there peacefully when I went into the coop Sunday.

This is the same "Rocky" whose feathers were sold to help spay Dusty the Cat and get Patches Cat neutered.  I'm sure he gets good karma from that! 

Rocky was a good father, too.   Whether or not the chicks were actually his genetically (he was getting rather old for breeding), he guarded a mother hen and her brood with his life.   When the chicks first hatched, I kept them and their mother in a large brooding cage until they were  fully feathered out (at about 3-4 weeks old.)    Up until that point, the hen was content to be in the cage away from the flock because, in the wild, she would raise her brood separately anyway.  When she was ready to leave the cage and rejoin the flock to forage outdoors, she let me know by trying to lead the chicks out of the cage.   Meanwhile, Rocky had been getting to know them through the wire.   When I released the hen and her chicks, he joined them and guarded them from cats and other predators.  I never lost a chick with Rocky on patrol!

Rocky will be missed, but he leaves behind many descendants to mate with my other three roosters, Sunshine, Blackie, and White Wing. 

So Rocky's line lives on! 

He's also imortalized on the cover of this new ebook I'm writing... 

A conservative think tank reportedly offered scientists and economists as much as $10,000 each to undermine an unsettling UN report on global warming released today. Stephen Beard has the story on National Public Radio:

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2007/02/02/AM200702021.html?refid=0

What next?   Burning scientists at the stake for Big Oil  "heresy"?  Galileo must be turning in his grave....