We currently have a Silkie chicken residing in a small cage in our bathroom. Isn't she gorgeous?
In order to feed her, I prepare a soft diet of scrambled eggs...yes, chickens love eggs...yogurt, oatmeal and whatever else I can scavenge from the fridge. She sits on a towel, on the table while I hold her upright and bring the food to her mouth. As you can see in her photo, she is a bearded Silkie which sometimes leaves me unable to find her beak. When serving raspberry and blueberry yogurts, this can cause a bit of a mess.
After her latest meal, it became obvious that she needed a bath. While she was soaking in her little bubble bath, it occured to me that I now had a sick, wet, cold chicken on my hands. Egads! What to do? Well, this is what concerns my children. I placed a thick towel in the dryer, turned it on for 3 minutes until it was good and warm, opened the door, created a little nest area in the middle of the toasty towel and placed LeyLa in it. Then I hung a second towel over the door to hold in the. Moments later, LeyLa was snuggled down in her make shift sauna and looking pretty comfortable. Every 15 minutes for the next hour I removed LeyLa from her sauna, reheated the towel and returned her to the healing warmth.
I suppose to some of you, not my BYC friends of course, may find this slightly bizarre. However in the grand scheme of things...not so much. To date we have birthed Pygmy goats in the sunroom, brooded chicks in our bedroom, incubated on Lindsey's dresser and allowed two Nigerian goat kids to winter over in our bathroom during a nasty 2 week freeze last January. I have also recently taken to identifying bees that find their way into the house before administering the death blow. If they are my honeybees, we follow the catch and release philosophy. Wasps and hornets still get the flyswatter. So, you see, I do know where to draw the line when it comes to the critters here at Camelot Farm. *wink*
I believe that this quality of care and the willingness to go the extra mile, also described by my 17 year old as going over the edge, gives my children a diverse perspective on responsibility, life and love. Someday, I hope that my children will remember their unique childhood and the lessons that they learned.
So many of life's lessons can not be learned in a book, they must be experienced. So I will sacrifice my 'normal' status and become the crazy chicken lady if it will provide them with a look at the world from a window that they might otherwise never have looked through. The fact that I enjoy every crazy minutes of it is simply a bonus.
Kim, I think that your children are so very lucky to have such a wonderful mom who is willing to show them the kindness and love in her heart. So many people get caught up in so many different things outside their lives that they don't have time for what actually goes on inside them.
ReplyDeleteYou have done a great job and I applaud you for it!