Being a big girl sucks

You know, sometimes being a big girl and making big girl decisions really sucks eggs.  You know my rule, stay positive on the blog, but you people might not think I was a real person if I didn't talk about the rough times in life on the farm as well and it seems like the shit pile has gotten rather large this week.  Yup, I usually keep it G rated too, but there's no other way to put it either.

The worst news of all was that Lucy Rabbit passed away while we were gone.  I had called multiple times to check on her and it sounded as if she was almost doing a tad bit better.  Our wonderful neighbor was taking as good of care of her as I had been and was even giving her cuddle time, but Sunday morning when he came she was gone.  When we arrived home that afternoon he had a tree sapling all ready to be planted wherever we chose to bury her; he knew how close she was to our hearts!!!!

So, this left us with a very hard decision to make, what to do with poor, broken-hearted Rusty.  Rabbits do not do well living alone and are meant to live in pairs or family units.  He was grieving terribly and would not even come out of his cage.  My family dynamics have changed drastically since we got into the rabbit business, and my children no longer pay much attention to them.  As a matter of fact, I have found it quite interesting that the kids have consoled me over this whole rabbit situation.  I knew the neighbor that gave me my original rabbit, also named Lucy, over a decade ago, had a single rabbit and had little kids that are learning to "homestead".  One e-mail later and I learned that they would be ecstatic to take Rusty; it was a perfect solution for two lonely rabbits and one young family, just not the crying old lady at the bottom of the hill!

Yesterday we lost our first hen.  I have no idea why.  She was just lying on the ground dead as a doornail, I couldn't believe my eyes.  Now, I know we have been blessed, living where we do and letting them free range that we haven't lost any up until now, but it was still kind of upsetting.  No signs of predator attack or anything, and another odd thing is that her eyes were closed, kind of morbid, but weird.  I mean what the hell? Oops I did it again, I think I have some anger pent up!

So, this is how the week has gone, I have some sort of the flu, and I do mean BAD!  Cold symptoms with puking at night (I know TMI, but just so you know how miserable I am...), the school district late Friday afternoon-right before we were leaving town ordered 100 breakfast burritos for Wednesday, and Tom's truck has broken down twice this week.  Yes, I know that is one heck of a run on sentence, but that is just the way my life seems to be these days.

As I have mentioned many times on this blog, one of my favorite things about the crazy mix of animals that I have on this ranch is the inter-species relationships that develop over the years.  Today when Rusty left Rosie the dog seemed very concerned and almost jumped in the van with him, but since she has been known to jump on the bus with my daughter, I didn't think too much about it.  But when we came inside and she stood in the spot where the rabbit cage has been since last summer and continuously barked for over fifteen minutes until I finally made her go outside it was almost more than I could handle.  I looked back over the pics of the rabbits and sure enough, Rosie is in every single one of them!