The merging of the flocks

Tonight was the night the Not-Buffs were smuggled into the main flock's coop while everyone was asleep.
The best time to move a chicken is while it's sleeping. Chickens sleep deep. The best time to move a chicken into a new flock is while they're all sleeping. Everybody wakes up in the morning, scratching and yawning and still half-asleep, and no one is really sure that they don't know that chicken they woke up next to. (Chickens aren't all that bright when they're wide awake. When they're sleepy, well... they make wide-awake chickens look like regular Einsteins.)
The fact that their pens have been side by side all this time should help with the 'recognition' illusion - they've had lots of time to stare at each other and get familiar.
We're crossing our fingers that the merger will go smoothly.

The main reason for the big push at unification? We only have two chicken waterers. In the summertime, that's fine - one for each pen. But in winter, when the waterers freeze overnight? It's too big a pain in the butt to thaw two waterers every morning, especially when we're trying to get ourselves off to work. With one pen, we only need one waterer, and we can swap out the frozen one with the one that had been thawing since the previous time we did chores.
Not to mention, feeding and watering one group of chickens is less time-consuming than feeding/watering two groups.
Efficiency R us...

This one's gonna stick...

It had to happen sooner or later. I'll just try to be grateful that it's later.
*sigh*

That snowless streak on the driver's side of the hood is from the jug of water I'd brought out to fill the rabbits' waterdishes. I set it on the hood of the car while I carried the sheep's bucket of water up to them, and while I was gone it slithered off the hood, popped its lid, and managed to empty itself. I had to slog back and refill it.
I just love doing chores in winter.

I laugh at our two groups of chickens. The main flock hates the snow - they were all inside their coop, and judging by the evidence of a trackless yard they hadn't been out since the snow started falling. (I took a picture, but it didn't come out, and I refuse to hat-coat-boot up again just for a picture of undisturbed snow. Not even for the blog.)
The Not-Buffs, on the other hand, would rather be outdoors than in, no matter what the weather.
Here's a closer look. Please notice that two of the hens are outside the fence - the one on the left and the mostly-white one.

Stupid birds. I could have wasted the morning chasing them, catching them, and sticking them back in their pen, knowing full well that they would just hop out again as soon as my back was turned.
I didn't bother.
I have to finish knitting that black hole red scarf, after all...

.

The Black Hole of Knitting

That's where I am with this red scarf.



It's a Palindrome. It's endless. I knit and knit and knit and knit, and it doesn't grow.
The deadline is looming.

Back to the knitting...

Luxury!

My car has heated seats. I can't begin to describe the joy of heated car seats in Vermont in December.
Luxury! (Which always brings this sketch to mind...)

I'm taking the night off.

So I won't be posting tonight.

Oh, wait.

Ummm.

Too late now, I suppose.

Well, as long as I'm here anyway, with fingers already typing and stuff, I'll do a chicken report.
Remember our two new roosters?
The big yellow fella is a few months older than the one we hatched, so he's got the whole spiffy tailfeathers and bigtime crowing voice going on. The hatchling rooster is trying to play catch-up while keeping a low profile at the same time. (He is not the top of the pecking order. He's not even near the top. A low profile means you get to keep your tailfeathers.)
He wants to practice his crow, but he knows better than to do it in front of the senior rooster. He usually lags back in the coop while everyone else goes outside, and sneaks in some practicing while no one is looking.
So far he can go "ERRR!" One syllable. Hardly the rolling "Cockadoodle-do" that he's aiming for.
We've listened to a lot of young roosters learn to crow. For the first day or two, they practice one and two syllable sounds, then they're off and running with the multi-syllabic version.
This guy has been stuck on "ERRR!" for two weeks now. We don't know if it's an inferiority complex or if we dropped him on his head...

Music for my ears

Madman and I have many lively arguments discussions about music. He's a trained musician, and I'm a simple plebeian. While we have some common ground (Phish, Bela Fleck, several others), our tastes widely diverge. I yawn over some of his choices, and Gogol Bordello and the DropKick Murphys set his teeth on edge.
But one thing we both love is all things a cappella. From Straight No Chaser to Sweet Honey in the Rock. ( I love Sweet Honey.)

This blew us both away.

Well, for me it's still December 1st...

Technically since it's after midnight, it's December 2nd, but since I haven't been to bed yet, I'm still living in December 1st. (Do you think time travel could be a function of sleep cycles? Or am I just tired?)
I was going to post after work, since that's what I do in the normal scheme of things. But my schedule has been wonky lately (since the nadir of working the midnight to 9am shift of Black Friday) and I forgot that the fact that I was working till 11:30pm would make an after-work post appear after midnight. i.e. tomorrow.

Anyway.

I worked the same shift yesterday - I had to leave the house by 2pm in order to get to work. Madman wouldn't be home till after 6pm. Normally we feed the sheep somewhere between 3 and 5-ish, depending on who is home when.
Since Madman wouldn't be home until long after what the fuzzlumps figured was suppertime, we agreed that I would throw some hay at them before heading in to work, even though it was very early. Otherwise when Madman got home, they would have already stormed the house, and he would have found them sprawled in the living room, eating all the potato chips, and watching Wallace and Gromit.
Now, bear in mind that our sheep always blat at all humans, trying to convince someone - anyone- that they're starving. Sheep are born to complain.
As I headed out the door yesterday, they started up. "Baa!" "Baaaaaaaaa!!!!!" "Maaaaa...." Just like always when a human comes into view.
But when I grabbed an armload of hay and headed for their pen, they all fell silent. Stared at me with big eyes and slack jaws.
"Whoa! We didn't think it was actually going to work..."
They actually looked puzzled as they dived for the hay.
Today, I was leaving at the same time, but Madman was going to be home soon after, so when they started blatting, I just ignored them and headed for my car.
They fell silent. "Yeah, we didn't think it would work two days in a row..."