2017 Life Logs, Day 42: Chicken Killer Blues
Date: Saturday, February 11, 2017
Weather: Mostly Sunny; Daytime 80’s, Nighttime 70’s F
Location: At Home with JJZ&C, Finca Maravilla, Aguada, PR
When I got up this morning, I walked out of the guest room and saw Justin and Ziggy. I said good morning to them, but Ziggy came right back with, “This is not a good morning.” By this time I could see he was crying and then I got the whole story. This was a day for the chicken killer blues. During the night, the dogs killed most of the laying hens. This is certainly not the first time these dogs have killed chickens, but Justin and Jo decided that it will be the last. Or at least they hope so. Barney and Yaya are a mother and son combination and Jo took them to the pound today. They will try to adopt them out, but if not, they will be put down. But they have tried everything and lost chickens, quail, and ducks to these guys over and over. It was time to make the hard decision. Losing the chickens was hard and making the decision to put down the dogs tough for both children and adults. So it was not the happiest of days around here.
Regardless, we made the best of things. While Jo was dealing with the dead chickens and a badly wounded rooster, Justin made blueberry pancakes with the kids. We had breakfast and then I drove to the pharmacy in Rincon to get a medication for Justin and antiseptic spray and gauze to wrap the rooster’s wound. No one thinks he will survive, but you have to try. And late this evening, that rooster actually started drinking water. If he makes it through the night, then he might have a shot at survival. He was wounded eight days ago by the dogs and he survived that ordeal. So we’re hoping he can do that again. While in Rincon, I also went to two different grocery stores for things. One store has organic grapes that the kids love and the other has Boars Head deli meats that they love. I was moving as fast as possible because I had promised Ziggy and Coco I would take them to the beach. When I got home, we had a little lunch and then took off for a beach called Steps. A set of concrete steps sits on the beach there, thus the name.
We got off to a rocky start, literally. We had to walk across the inner coral and rock shelf to get to the water. And we no sooner got into the water than the waves started hitting us with a force too great for Coco. She was being swept back on to the rock shelf. I grabbed her bathing suit strap and held on for dear life, but the waves were too strong for me as well. I fell down, but still held on. We averted crashing on the rocks by skin of our teeth and made our way back to the beach before another wave could hit us. Ziggy was fine, but he didn’t put up a fuss about getting out of the water. We walked down the beach in the opposite direction to a place where their inner reef provides a protective barrier where there are shallow pools.
This was totally calm and we spent our afternoon there exploring the tide pools and playing on the beach. And we stopped at the snack shack afterwards to have a coconut drink. It was delightful.
Ziggy, Coco, and I have decided we will try to visit every beach in Rincon this week, so after the Sunday Farmer’s Market, we’ll head out for another beach experience. This sunshine and warm weather is glorious. And the update on Justin is that he is doing okay. Today was not quite as good as yesterday, but he is hanging in there. A major problem is that he is much too much like his mother and just won’t rest!
