{"id":512,"date":"2010-05-15T19:16:56","date_gmt":"2010-05-16T02:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=512"},"modified":"2010-10-20T03:51:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-20T10:51:00","slug":"cute-is-overrated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=512","title":{"rendered":"Cute is Overrated."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I canceled the spring farm tour.\u00a0 Not because I wanted to cancel it.\u00a0 I know opening the farm for tours is a great way to make friends out of the neighbors and win new customers.\u00a0 But the animals won’t cooperate.\u00a0 Everyone wants to see cute cuddly chicks and cute fluffy ducklings and cute playful goat kids.\u00a0 But the animals on my farm don’t do cute.\u00a0 They laugh at cute.\u00a0 They spit in cute’s eye.\u00a0 They eat cute for breakfast.\u00a0 They meet cute in the corral at high noon and say “Go ahead, cute.\u00a0 Make my day.”<\/p>\n

Let’s consider the first chicks to hatch this year as an example.\u00a0 Despite frigid temperatures, one of our ducks, Grey Girl, managed to hatch 2 chicks in early spring.\u00a0 (Yes, a duck hatching chicks.\u00a0 Don’t even get me started on that….) They were cute.\u00a0 And cuddly.\u00a0 But by the time 4 chicks were hatched, the biggest chick started to eat the others.\u00a0 I know.\u00a0 Not cute.<\/p>\n

I never actually saw it happen.\u00a0 And although there is an avian pathology unit in the state capital, there is no poultry CSI.\u00a0 So, a farmer has to go with her gut.\u00a0 Here were the facts I had to work with:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 In the morning there would be some freshly hatched chicks peeping excitedly.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 In the evening there would be only one chick remaining.\u00a0 One fat, glossy, bright-eyed chick.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 There were no bodies.\u00a0 None.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 Repeat facts 1 and 2 for 4 days in a row.<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0 Grey Girl seemed tired but restless. Like if she didn’t find her chick as cute as much as she found it, say, alarming.\u00a0 Like if she slept with one eye open every night.<\/p>\n

I pondered the cause of death with Pretty, my 8 year old specialist in livestock feed rations, animal husbandry, and pulling ducklings out of the small spaces in the barn where they wander, get stuck, and I can’t fit in to pull them out.\u00a0 (You’d be surprised at how few people have that last skill.\u00a0 It’s not exactly something you can advertise for on craigslist when trying to find a farm assistant.\u00a0 Posting “Requirement: small enough to fit in nooks and crannies” will probably get you flagged.)<\/p>\n

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”\u00a0 I asked her.<\/p>\n

She nodded.<\/p>\n

“Yeah.\u00a0 Probably fratricide,” she said.<\/p>\n

I nodded also.\u00a0 Then we went in the house and I sneaked off to google “fratricide.”\u00a0 Needless to say, I was relieved that “fratricide” indicated that she and I both suspected the chick was eating the other hatchlings.\u00a0 A common enough practice among birds.\u00a0 Then I became incredibly concerned that she knew the proper term that is defined as “the killing of one’s brother.”\u00a0 Since she has 3 brothers.\u00a0 And they don’t always get along.\u00a0 I’m sure she learned about fratricide in her unit on raptors at school.\u00a0 I’m sure.\u00a0 Sure enough that I can sleep almost every night without worrying about it.\u00a0 Like every 3 out of 5 nights.\u00a0 That’s sure enough, right?<\/p>\n

But it isn’t just the cannibal chick. The ducks have failed to produce their own cute, fluffy offspring.\u00a0 Which is a surprise considering the new drake is quite an active male.\u00a0 By active I mean he spends all his daylight hours pursuing the females, pinning them in a corner and then having his way with them while pulling out their neck feathers.\u00a0 Also, scratching them with his claws.\u00a0 And\u00a0 holding their heads under the dirt and leaf debris in the duck pasture.\u00a0 And pecking their shoulders and pulling at their wing tips.\u00a0 It is less like mating and more like a disturbing case of domestic violence.\u00a0 So visitors won’t see ducklings in the duck pen.\u00a0 But they might just have to answer questions from their children like “Why is that big duck trying to kill all the other ones?”\u00a0 Which doesn’t reassure the neighbors or keep customers coming back for more.<\/p>\n

The rooster makes me nervous, too.\u00a0 Whenever he sidles up to a youngster on a playdate at the farm, puffs his chest, and flaps his wings, it makes my Spidey senses tingle.\u00a0 He could emit a masculine crow, earning appreciative oohs and aahs from the guest.\u00a0 Or he could unleash a sudden attack with flashing spurs.\u00a0 He’s never attacked before, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t waiting to do it front of 50 horrified civilian spectators.\u00a0 “Isn’t he cute?” I say as I position myself between him and any potential victims.\u00a0 “We just love him to DEATH,”\u00a0 I say pointedly, giving him a stern glance and hoping he gets the hint.\u00a0 Never bite the hand that feeds you or spur the hand that wields the butcher knife.\u00a0 Got it, mister?<\/p>\n

Even those animals without a potential for violence don’t handle tour pressure very well.\u00a0 Carmen, one of our Nigerian Dwarf goats, hasn’t had a cute, playful kid yet.\u00a0 But she does have a lot of discharge with her pregnancy.\u00a0 (Oh, wait you weren’t eating anything were you?\u00a0 Sorry, explicit farm info without a warning.)\u00a0 Since she’s a first time freshener we don’t know if this is typical or if she’s having a problem with kidding.\u00a0 I’ve adopted a wait and see attitude.\u00a0 Because any other attitude requires me to pay a minimum of $150 to the vet.\u00a0 Meanwhile, everyone who sees her says, “Hey, what’s that hanging out of her butt?”\u00a0 How cute is that, huh?\u00a0 Thanks for bringing me down, Carmen.<\/p>\n

The pony isn’t even pretending to participate in farm tour preparation.\u00a0 He wanders around ignoring us because he has fresh grass to nibble on and is no longer subject to begging for grain.\u00a0 If he honors us with his presence, it is only a brusque nod while rubbing his hind end vigorously on the picnic table.\u00a0 Oh, did I mention he’s shedding in big ugly chunks?\u00a0 So that he appears to be a miniature yak instead of a pony.\u00a0 Not cute.\u00a0 I’d talk to him about providing rides for toddlers but I’d have to climb all the way down to the backside of the pond dam (where the greenest greens grow) and beg for his attention.\u00a0 Besides, I already know what his answer will be.<\/p>\n

Ray-Ray, our blind sheep, looks cute for brief interludes.\u00a0 He will stand obligingly as crowds bury their hands in his fluff and endure an educational discussion about lanolin and hair sheep versus fiber sheep.\u00a0 Until he eventually (and I do mean e….v…..e….n….t….u….a….l….l….y.\u00a0 He’s not the sharpest tool in the sheep shed) realizes he is surrounded by strangers and sinks, trembling, to his knees while emitting a frightened stream of urine.<\/p>\n

On a good day, the people don’t notice and simply gather their children around saying, “Quick, get a picture with him while he’s laying down.”\u00a0 While I try to nonchalantly kick leaves and straw over the puddle of pee.\u00a0 On a bad day, when he hits the ground he will start flailing around hysterically, creating a fountain of urine, and causing the crowd to also start flailing around hysterically.\u00a0 On a nightmare day, someone asks if there’s such a thing as mad sheep disease, which makes me start babbling about the origins of scrapie, Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, and Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease and how there’s no way we have it on my farm.\u00a0 Which empties out the farm parking area in about 2.3 seconds.\u00a0 So much for making friends out of the neighbors and winning new customers.<\/p>\n

To top off all these non-cute farm conditions, a neighboring farm just had to put their donkey down for rabies.\u00a0 A week after they held a farm tour.\u00a0 The odds of your donkey getting rabies is one in a billion.\u00a0 The odds of finding out your donkey has rabies after you had a bunch of civilians over to pet the farm animals is one in a Are-you-freaking-kidding-me?-Was-I-a-serial-killer-in-a-previous-life-to-deserve-this-kind-of-punishment?-illion.\u00a0 So I’m taking it as a sign.\u00a0 No farm tour this year.\u00a0 Check back for cute next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I canceled the spring farm tour.\u00a0 Not because I wanted to cancel it.\u00a0 I know opening the farm for tours is a great way to make friends out of the neighbors and win new customers.\u00a0 But the animals won’t cooperate.\u00a0 Everyone wants to see cute cuddly chicks and cute fluffy ducklings and cute playful goat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[35,37,15,83,18,39,34,38],"class_list":["post-512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chicks","tag-ducklings","tag-ducks","tag-farm-tour","tag-goats","tag-pony","tag-rooster","tag-sheep"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=512"}],"version-history":[{"count":55,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1121,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions\/1121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}