About ten months ago, I started looking at PhD programs. I looked EVERYWHERE. Pretty much all of the states, even the gross ones. I found ten that I liked, and I think four that I really REALLY liked. There is a program in Washington State that I just...I am salivating over still. It is an absolutely amazing program that I am, to my everlasting chagrin, an unqualified candidate for. I spent a few months agonizing over my options while also applauding myself for having the options to begin with (I'm a relatively competitive candidate. Not the greatest, but certainly no slouch), and for various reasons, I decided that the PhD in Education and Human Development at CU Denver was the program that was the best fit for me. I've spent the last few months talking to the faculty, meeting with the director of the program, thinking about the logistics of a move to Denver should I get into the program...I've taken this very seriously. When we were in Colorado, Derek and I were seriously checking out neighborhoods and thinking about livability.
However.
The way that CU has responded to the student led protests gives me pause about applying, and I am not at all doing a good job selling my hesitation. I wrote an email to the board of regents, despite Derek telling me it would not matter one lick to them what a person who was thinking about applying to their school thought. I know he's right, since they don't care what the people who attend there think, either. I haven't heard back, and I don't expect to. I haven't yet reached out to the direcor of the program, because I am having a hard time letting go of getting my PhD via that program dreams, and I am fairly certain that anything he tells me will not make me change my mind.
I don't know what to do. Thus far, there is no call to action for pulling yourself as a student from any school, or not applying to any school, and I feel like that's what I should be paying the most attention to, but there's an unrelenting kicking in my gut that says I shouldn't. There are currently no schools that I am a viable candidate for (for reasons of either my academic record leaves me out, or I have no interest in attending the school. Mostly the first one, let's be so for real) who HAVE agreed to student demands of divestment and transparency in where funds are allocated, and while I do think financial pressure is the only language that institutions understand (that and violence), I think that moving in unison with the organizations I trust and am part of is more important. And right now, they're not saying students should withdraw/not apply. I started this blog a few weeks ago, and I've been thinking about how to proceed pretty exclusively in the duration. I think I will apply. I found another program for counseling psychology that I think I'm going to apply to, as well.
In other news, it's been a bit of a fucking murder spree on the mini Tucci farm. Several months ago, Derek and I made the decision to get more chickens. Well...when I say that, what I really mean is the decision was made for me. At first. Someone told me, "hey. My ducks hatched 3 chicken eggs and now nobody is caring for them, do you want them?" and I was like YOU BET YOUR SWEET ASS. And on my way home with my three new cheep cheeps in tow, I decided they looked lonely, so I stopped by Bomgaars and got three more. We had Fritter, Fucktwat, Maybelline, Kung Pao, Tikka, and Tandoori. After about a week, I told Derek I wanted to go to Cackle to put some real money into our chickens, and get my vanity breeds. So we went and got a few more. We got 7 more. In my defense, I only went to Cackle with the intenion of buying 5, and they gave me two for free. We were raising our girlies, loving on them the way we do, and after about 6 weeks, we were ready to put them outside. Derek and I had spent a really long time digging a predator perimeter, laying down hardware cloth, getting a literal ton of fucking rocks and dumping them in the channels by the coop. We made the coop a fucking fortress of chicken solitude. Nothing too good for our girlies, something my dad thinks is ridiculous. I would send him pictures of my Fritter on my shoulder like a little parrot, and he'd be like, DREA THEY ARE LIVESTOCK ANIMALS, NOT PETS. And I would be like, but why not both? I loved my girlies and gentleman (Kung Pao is a rooster. We could tell about two weeks in, he exhibited clear rooster behavior. We were going to give him to our friend beecause we don't want roosters, but...well. You'll see), so I doted on them. I dote on everyone I love. Derek and I were outside for HOURS shoring up the coop to be Fort fucking Knox, but we had a misunderstanding. There is a hole in the side fence of the run itself. Fairly large, but pretty high up in the fencing, that I noticed and pointed out to Derek. We thought it wasn't great, but ultimately that it was low on the list of things that needed to be dealt with immediately.
As we were getting ready to put the ladies and Kung Pao in their new home for the night, Derek says to me, what about the hole in the side wire? And I said, nah, even if something climbs in through it, the ladies are safe and sound in their coop. And he said, "ok". And we went to bed and awoke to an absolute fucking massacre. We went to bed with thirteen chickens and when we woke up, only seven were alive. I was hysterical. I thought my ladies had been sleeping, they like to stretch out in the warm, but no. They were stone cold fuckin' dead. The littlest ones had been eating, while the bigger ones had just been killed, their little bodies strewn about the coop like trash. Among them my sweet Fritter. My Fritz. She was bossy and I loved her. We all did. She was first to come up to you and fly up onto your shoulder. I loved her so desperately, she was a wonderful little chicken. We had 6 ladies and 1 gentleman left, and wee had to check them all for wounds. To our relief, almost all of them were absolutely fine. Thing one and Thing two were in perfect order. Fucktwat was excellent. Marjoram was fine. Kung Pao was a brave rooster and had been protecting his flock, we are positive he saved the ones who were left alive. Tikka and Tandoori were another story, though. Tikka, our sweet easter egger/welsummer mix, had a broken wing and a broken foot, and was covered in wounds. Tandoori had a broken wing and a big wound on her back. We rushed Tikka in to our makeshift medical living room, prepared a quarantine bin for her, and cleaned her up. Derek 3D printed her a splint for her leg, I was convinced we could save her, even though Derek and I talked about how maybe we should put her down. But while he was cleaning her up, I did as much research into saving a chicken in her condition as I could, and in the end, we opted to try. She was our sweet Tikka and we loved her. Ultimately she did not make it. After three days of trying...diligently cleaning her wounds, changing her bandages, trying to feed her, getting her to drink, she was just not getting better, we knew she was suffering, and we did the kindest thing we could. Derek and I were in emotional tatters for a couple of days. I love my husband to the ends of the universe, but one thing he is not is emotional. In the almost eleven years we have been together, I have never seen him cry. Not once. Until we had to kindly euthanize our sweet Tikka girl.
Tandoori has made a full recovery, though her wing will always be broken. We tried our best to set it, but she kept removing her split over night every night, so we were just like...fine. Have it your way. But she is happy and healthy and living outside with Kung Pao, Fucktwat, Marjoram, and Things one and two.
What happened, you may ask? Thank you for inquiring, I would love to share. Derek and I misunderstood each other. When he asked me about the hole in the fencing, I thought he meant the one I had pointed out to him in the run fencing. What he ACTUALLY meant was the breeze window fencing. There was a loose bit that hadn't been bolted down. We assumed a racoon spotted the weakness and exploited it, getting in and killing our wonderful ladies.
Now.
We have lost a LOT of chickens. The mini homestead learning curve is steep as fucking fuck for us, but we've taken each lesson and we have never made the same mistake. With our first brood, we lost two in the same day to what we assumed was a hawk, and we were like, NOPE. Fuck that, time to fence them in. So we built the run in a fucking day. Had to keep our ladies safe. After a few months, we lost a couple more and couldn't fgure out how or why, until we saw that the foxes had gotten into the run from a hole they dug in a corner we couldn't see. Shored that hole up with more fencing. We had a racoon slip in to the coop once, looking for eggs. It only killed Ms. Frizzle, and we know it only killed her because she gave that racoon the fucking pecking of a lifetime. That racoon was scared, and it only killed her because she was protecting her ladies. Which she did, they all lived but her. Annd it went like this for awhile. Foxes would find a weakness in our coop, they'd get a free chicken dinner out of their keen awareness, and Derek and I would triage the situation and adjust. Sadly, when we were in Colorado, there was a fairly large weakness introduced to the run that the kids tried super hard to fix with our long distance assistance, but they could not, and we lost our entire flock over the course of three days.
I missed my chickns. I love having chickens, they are so swet and affectionate and they have such vibrant little personalities. So Derek and I talked about it: should we get more chickens? Neither of us wanted a repeat of what happened while we were in Colorado. After I was given three chicks, bought three more, and then bought five more and was given two for free, Derek and I spent their six weeks indoors really fucking hunkering down on their run and coop. The misunderstanding sucked, we lost some of our favorite chickens because of it, but Derek fixed it, the coop is solid now, and our ladies and Kung Pao are happily outside, enjoying their lives (we hope). We have ben taking all of these losses and lessons to heart, and we know now how to have the safest run possible.
But what the fuck, racoons?
We needed to figure out how they were getting in and out, if there was a den nearby that we could humanely catch and relocate. We had stopped feeding our racoons and skunks and possums ages ago, but that didn't mean they were gone from our yard. We live right up against forest. Derek and I were walking the yard when I noticed a lot of displaced rocks and I was like...that's weird. So we moved the climb gym we had against the house for the cats (that's a lie for "box spring", though it is there for the cats. We moved it there one day while we were cleaning things out of the basement and the cats were so smitten with climbing it and resting on it that we couldn't throw it away as planned, so we left it. And they fucking love that thing. We do not care, since we are he last house on the stree and nobody bu us sees that side of the house) and what did we find? A fucking massive hole. I knew it wasn't a groundhog, and I could tell it wasn't a fox den. But what the fuck could it be? Derek and I were perplexed. I just happened to go look at the coop tto see if there were signs of destruction or attempts of a B&E and I noticed a paw print on tthe side of the coop. A really fucking big one. And it clicked.
"Derek..." I said, a little befuddled, "It's a fucking badger."
"No fucking way is it a nbadger" Derek said.
Guess who was right.
So it's been a badger murdering our chickens. Here we've been assuming the worst of the local racoon population when it's been a god damn badger. Now I am not the kind of person to kill animals for doing what is in their nature to do. I can't even kill bugs, they're just trying to live their best little buggy lives. We had a mouse problem in Hawai'i (everyone does), and when our landlord was like, "whoops, w forgot to exterminate before you moved in, we'll take care of it" I shouted a very passionate "LIKE FUCKING HELL YOU WILL!" and I managed the problem with a catch and releade program. Live traps, driving them over five miles away, releasing. I can't kill animals. I refuse. So when Derek and my dad said we needed to dispatch the badger post haste, I threw a fit. It isn't the badger's fault that we're stupid, the badger moved into a neighborhood with a local grocery store that served its favorite easy meal. That is an us problem, not the badger. Derek built a pulsing sound repellent machine which has worked a treat, we're damn near positive the badger is gone now. We have seen no activity for a couple of days, so we're going to rebury the den, as I now feel confident there are no babies in it.
On August 1st, I told Derek I wanted to get more vanity chickens. I'm a girl who knows what she wants, and what she wants is vanity chickens. I have made a very good checklist of heat tolerant, cold hardy, beautiful egg laying chickens, so I picked ou my breeds and went back to Cackle to get 5 more chickens and they again gave me two free. We have seven little cheepies in the brooder box in the living room. Two Columbian Wyandottes (Zaphod and Beeblebrox), two Welsummers (Ford and Vogon), two Salmon Faverolles (Trillian and Marvin), and one barred rock (Slartibartfast). We stopped giving them funny chickeen dish names because we're farm superstitious. Our Adams batch is also very friendly. We love them, they love us, and I am a happy chicken lady.
The chickens outside, even our sweetie Tandoori, have resumed being feral little cunts who want nothing to do with us. I joked morbidly with Derek tthat I was irritated about the badger taking all of our friendly chickens and leaving only the assholes who hate us. Couldn't even leave my Fritz.
Anyway. I woke up this morning to chicken screams from our living room brooder to find our cat Claude in the pen, and one chicken missing. My favorite one. Zaphod. I was devestated that there was a tiny cheep cheep body somewhere in my house, dead, because of my dumb cats. Bu thankfully she was just out exploring the living room. The cats hadn't harmed a single feather on the chickens, they just wanted under the heat lamp. So everyone is accounted for, and all is well in our tiny world.
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