Carsten, pops and I were reminiscing on some of our attempts at raising animals. These included the mauling of our poor bunnies and their babies. What kind of animal can skin a rabbit and never actually get it out of the cage?
We talked about the various chickens we've owned. Some we hatched and raised from their incubated eggs. Others we bought at Big R as little fuzzy, newborn chicks. They all produce very few eggs (total of 5 or so a week, from a dozen chickens) and have had rather traumatizing lives/deaths. One batch was attacked and eaten/scattered by a bear. Some would get out of the pen, wander into the woods and most assuredly were eaten before the next morning. One poor chick got caught in between the netting and the covering that were pressed against each other, when it was already sleeping at the bottom of the yard-deep box (we haven't a single clue how in this wide earthit managed that Houdini act). The rest ... well, they eventually ended up in the freezer.
I believe the oddest thing we ever produced was Clara's duck. We all went to Big R and picked out a chick. But the super-random 6yr old had to insist on the ugly duckling. As the only non-chicken we didn't really give it any special care. It ended up thinking that it was a chicken. It made the strangest, most pathetic quack. It wanted to walk like a chicken, with a duck's anatomy and ended up shuffling around on its stomach, constantly tripping and face-planting. It would get attacked by the actual chickens, so we had to separate it and then it would pace up and down by the separator and rub the tip of its feet raw.
I felt bad for the poor, confused thing.
You know, I think the only animal we've actually had any luck with are goldfish. We had a batch of 10 goldfish about 5 years ago that are still alive. How did that even happen? I didn't even know they could live that long! Don't goldfish usually die after only a few days?
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