New ducks

Found a fabulous deal on Craigslist - 7 ducks (females) for $20, a combination of Khaki Campbells and Blue Swedes. Making arrangements to go get them this afternoon, the lovely synapsepi is over to help. We're going to keep them about a week or so to figure out who the layers are, likely do some swapping out for better layers from our own flock. Sam, the Savior, is happy to process ducks for us @ 1 duck for him, 2 for us.

For the week or two the new ducks will be living in the West Wing of Bunhalla. The two Bunboys, Winken & Nod, will be temporarily sharing Martha's pen - something they may all enjoy as they got along great before. I'll have to figure out how to temporarily band the new ducks, the Poultry Queen keastree recommended zip ties, I may see if I can find those spiral cord keepers for computer cords locally.

Should make for an interesting few weeks, glad I bought more feed last week! Can't wait for duck meat. Yummy!

Update: Looks like we're getting another 3 ducks for free, mixed flock. Already arranging to have folks come over a week from tomorrow for butchering.

Yes, yes, picy goodness to come.

Exciting afternoon

While Heather and I were separating out zip ties for the duck pickup, we heard the teenager Brittany screaming next door. Her house was filled with smoke and she was in full hysterics. Fortunately, she hadn't gotten inside so I ran over, handed her off to Heather to calm down at my house since she was still in full panic attack mode. 911 was called, fire trucks were sent out and I directed them to the house, as Erica (our neighbor) hasn't any number signage at her driveway entry or on her house. I also had grabbed the house key from Brittany so we saved the front door having to be bashed in.

I caught a lungfull of burnt plastic smoke, stupid me. After racing around the house looking in the windows, I couldn't see any fire and no smoke was coming out from under the doors. Since the front doorknob wasn't hot and I could see clear into the entry, I had cracked open the door to see if I could get their dog out but he was apparently in a crate back in one of the bedrooms. To add to the confusion, Brittany thought he was in the laundry room so the poor fireman kept searching the laundry room, yanked the appliances away from the wall, etc. to find him.

Long story short - Scoobie, the dachshund was finally found and saved and everyone was safe. Erica had emptied out the woodstove ashes into a plastic bucket, which caught fire at some point today. Fortunately, Erica had set the bucket on the tile base around the woodstove. If it hadn't been for the tile, the house would have burned down according to the chief.

Meanwhile, I need to see a woman about ducks.