I heard the crash first thing this morning.
It was Anna, trying to remove the blanket from her birds’ cage which she received as a birthday present last month. The whole cage tipped over. Water. Seeds. Droppings.
But I’ll take it.
Because running the vacuum cleaner over the basement rug and refilling a tiny container of water is the easiest thing I’ll do for animals today!
Last night the temperatures were in the single digits, the high today is right at freezing. So we’ll water the animals, probably twice, by stomping through the ice and filling their buckets with hot water we’ll get out of the kitchen sink. We’ll haul the steaming buckets outside to melt more of that ice for the livestock and bring the chicken’s waterer in the house and switch it out for the one that’s been melting all over the tile. Then I’ll need to disinfect the sink, make sure the lid is on the various food containers, and wipe up the mud we tracked through the back porch while doing all of this.
So despite the crash this morning, I’m taking the opinion that parakeets are the best animal we have on the farm. Cleaning out their cage means removing a double layer of paper towel, rather than six wheelbarrows full of straw and yuck.
Getting water for them on a cold day doesn’t involve Carhartt, chore boots, or even opening an exterior door.
You buy their bags of feed in ounces, not pounds.
The people at the pet store were a little worried I was buying parakeets for a newly turned six-year-old. But really it’s all about perspective.
We’ve got this!
Daddy's Tractor 