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Demolition Derby – –

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Jack just barely gets his Wednesday post over the line – –

Wendy wrote a post last week about finding the jars of canned beans and pickles in the rubble of the demolished house next door.

But the actual process of demolition was also interesting!

On the first day a very big bulldozer arrived and began bashing in the windows and then the gable end. Within just a few hours most of the house was reduced to rubble. I was amazed at just how quickly a house that had stood for many decades (maybe a century) could be knocked down.

Then a big truck arrived and the bulldozer began grabbing bits of wood, metal and plastic and dumping them into the truck. This was actually a much slower process than just the knocking down and many days later is still continuing.

Meanwhile the dozer driver, while waiting for the truck to come back, knocked down the garage in less than an hour!

I went out to the porch for my second cup of coffee yesterday morning and wondered why I could unusually see all the way down the street. Then I realized that they’d also ripped up the tall hedge that used to separate the demolished house from the one down from it.

It’s strange how something that isn’t yours, but has been part of your life for even just five years, can affect you. Of course we have no right to say anything about it or what should be done with it.

But, yet, – – those beans and pickles – – –

Leaving the Isle of Eigg for Boarding School – –

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Jack just barely gets over the line this week – –

This story starts with the four chicken babes that appeared unannounced in our backyard a few weeks ago. We think someone for whatever reason just dropped them over the fence! For a few days they lived in our bathroom (before the remodeling commenced). Then they were moved to a small very nice coop we were gifted a couple of years back by our good friends Kirk and Nancy.

But they are teenagers now (they grow so quickly) so we needed to move them to a bigger pen at the top of the yard where they could safely practice line dancing and such – –

K ‘n’ N had just lost their favorite and last chicken when a neighbor’s loose dog sent it to chicken heaven and were so devastated they didn’t want any more, so they had yet another small coop they didn’t need – –

Wendy reckoned that instead of trying to shift the teenagers in their existing home up to the pen maybe see if K ‘n’ N might let us have the redundant one and rebuild it up there.

So Wendy collected the disassembled coop from our generous friends, along with the instruction leaflet and we set to work.

Then the fun began – –

The instructions were for the coop our good and generous friends had given us previously and the parts were identified by letters – a, b, c. etc. But the new one they gave us had parts with numbers on them. What also didn’t help was that both coops looked very similar yet had completely different interiors.

Wendy found a video of some braggart crowing about how easy the thing was to assemble, and watched it three times.

We knew we would have spare parts left, because we had agreed that the coop should be assembled on the side of the chicken run. This was so the chicks could play in the run/pen but have somewhere to shelter and roost. We had to make sure that the pen and the coop were secure from predators including our cats so there was much chicken wire engineering required!

After much internet research and viewing of YouTube videos we finally, after a few false starts, got the coop together and connected to the pen. Chicken wire folds in amazing ways, and Wendy treated covering the coop like folding a fitted sheet. “There has to be a way,” she kept muttering. Usually looking darkly at me afterwards.

It took three days but the wee house is completely enclosed in chicken wire except the door between the two enclosures.

Never underestimate the power of a heavy duty stapler and a few hundred zip ties. It may not be pretty, but it’s tighter than Fort Knox.