MacNamara's Band

Bessie Anne woke me at 4:30 a.m., saying she absolutely had to go out right that minute.  Aaargh.  Well, when you gotta, you gotta, so we got up and plodded down the hall.  I turned on the porch light, opened the door, let her out, and watched her calmly sit down on the step.  Double aaargh.

"Oh, the drums go bang and the cymbals clang and the horns they blaze away...."  The song "MacNamara's Band" comes frequently to mind on my way to and from the barn.  The lid on one of the milk buckets doesn't sit right and it rattles and clangs as I walk along.  Tessie has joined the band.  She's found that if she stands on hind legs, she can get that unicorn horn under the edge of the metal roof overhang, give it a flip and make a wonderful racket.  All we need now are kazoos.

I put in a call to Go-To Guy (Jim) about the blankety-blank faucet and pipe.  It being Thursday and a workday, I asked if I'd called at a bad time.  "Nope.  Sittin' at the lake with a fishing pole and a beer."  (A benefit of being self-employed.)  I apologized for interrupting important business.  He'll be here tomorrow.

I get some strange requests.  "Do you have room in your freezer for half a hog?"  "Why yes, I do."  (The pork was butchered and wrapped.)  I don't however, have space in the laundry room for the nine or ten chicks that Camille wanted to move in.  She'd found a great buy on some pullets and had thought about getting them, but didn't have a pen ready.  The six I've got in residence are about all I can handle at the moment.  They're growing fast and eating me out of house and home.  Noisy little boogers, they begin banging on their metal feed trough as soon as there's a hint of daylight.  More band members.  They not only play in the percussion section, they also peep the vocals in the chorus.