The most surprising recent event has been the sudden appearance of a peahen. She simply showed up in our backyard….and hasn’t left since! Probably it’s been around 1.5 weeks so far, maybe 2 weeks. I attempted to find the owner via Nextdoor, but didn’t find one. She likes to walk around the yard along with the chickens, and seems to want to join the flock. The chickens are intimidated by her and try to maintain a distance. However, I think they are starting to get used to her. I’ve named the peahen Clytemnestra, Nessa for short. (She maybe murdered her husband LOL).
Nessa spends her nights up in a tree and in the morning you can often hear her loud call, kind of like a horn honking. She likes treat-time just like the chickens, but chickens are scared to eat from same pile so I go out and give chickens some and Nessa a different pile, and stand there for a bit to prevent Nessa from stealing from chicken pile. She’s not aggressive or mean, but if she simply walks over the chickens will abandon the food. So it works out fine.
She hangs in same places as chickens, which includes the flowerbeds by the back of the house. The thing is that Nessa’s neck is so long that she can look in the windows! So she sometimes just watches us which is hilarious.
Just a day or two after Nessa moved in our human guests, Tom and Leah, arrived from Minnesota. They were here a few days and took one day to explore San Antonio (Rob and I stayed home). We checked out classic Austin fare, went to a brewery, and walked Zilker/Barton Springs. We all had a really fun time, and, incredibly, the dogs were GOOD!! As in, not a lot of fussing…in fact, by the latter half of their visit, both Tom and Leah could pet each of the dogs and there was a comfort level among everyone. It was SUCH a breakthrough for the dogs!
The deer continue to be aggressive and I do have a little bit of footage of the dogs sparring with a deer on the other side of the fence. Fortunately, we have this fence as dogs actually get attacked otherwise!
We still see Piccolo, the baby deer, around our yard. Actually, there are a couple that hang around our yard.
Pullets still doing fine, and at treat-time each day they will now eat out of my hand. They mostly come right down on their ramp in the morning, but the cochin still occasionally gets confused about how to get down.
Realizing that my reluctance to travel is heightened now that I have so many dependents here: the dogs, the chickens, the pullets, the peahen, the mealworms, and the starter (which is actually about 50 million yeasts and 5 billion bacteria).
Below are trailcam pics from today which were fun because besides are armadillo, there’s what appears to be a bat captured on 3 pics.
More pics below. Notice the little deer in the pic of the grass & wildflowers. Also the pic of apparently scientists that were studying the Barton Springs Salamander!
