Missing Chickens and Giant Hamsters!

This is Apollo in his summer coat relaxing at HQ. He is now in a field causing havoc, covered in mud and jumping fences to get to other horses to play piggy back, the sooner he is done the sooner order will be restored and we can all relax.

Any ideas about finishing the concreting were washed away in yet another downpour. I did manage to get a ton down yesterday despite the best efforts of the frost and then more rain. A two hour window late afternoon meant I finally got round to laying the slab in front of the back stable which has the much sought after "sort of" finish. This means its sort of flat and sort of smooth, all hopes of getting a perfect finish were thwarted by a combination of incompetence and a chicken who decided to try and fly over the newly laid wet stuff in an attempt to reach its perch. As chickens are to flying as fish are to bicycles it fell short of its target and had to be rescued before it became a novelty feature.

Part of the day involved taking the Stable Sprite to get his lambs. A quick trip over to the abattoir and the rewards of his hard labour were safely stowed in the glove box of the car. This was a bit of a disappointment to Stable Sprite who had thought of hiring an articulated lorry with freezer attachments to transport the meat back to his kingdom and who had scoffed at the idea that it would all fit in the boot of Ben's Peugeot. On the subject of which I have almost kept my promise to look after it and not transport animals or their foodstuffs inside the ultra clean car. I am sure he meant live animals so four dead ones don't count, and he completely failed to mention don't carry fencing posts and all the gubbins needed to build a chicken Alcatraz. Talking of chickens, like Stable Sprite and I were on the way to collect the sheep meat I was making the usual death threats to Mr Fox who had by my reckoning had five chickens this week. Shutting the birds away last night we were missing four brown ones and one white. Tracey is very keen that her birds are not on the menu for Mr Fox and a fun time was had searching the hill for the birds or their remains. It was only as I recounted this tale to Stable Sprite that I in fact knew exactly where the missing birds were all the time having been the one who had shut them in the back stable just before laying the concrete in front of it.

Back to the minuscule meat portions. Sheep are easily recognisable mainly I would hazard to suggest by their thick woolly fleece. When they are departed of this world the mortal remains are devoid of wool and therefore look, how shall we put this, a bit smaller than when last bleating. Stable Sprites lambs were small fully clothed. Naked and split in two they looked like giant rats. NO, rats are bigger and have tails, they looked like giant hamsters. He had hoped to cut each leg into three pieces he muttered casting an eye over the tiny rodent like carcasses. Well you still can I happily pointed out, bite sized.