Mitey Big Problem

So last night on the internet I was looking up "Chicken Mites". Like I'm sure you all were.

Emma and I kept noticing that when we went in to feed the chickens or gather eggs, we'd come out feeling a little itchy. NOT THE LICE THING AGAIN. The little bugs were like tinier than poppyseeds. I looked it up on my favorite porn site, Backyard Chicken. And yes, look, everyone has chicken mites. On that site. They don't spread to anything but chickens. But they do feel nice and itchy as they run up your arms looking for the chicken in you.

So the site recommended doing all this stuff to get rid of mites. Like, you know, moving everything out of your chicken house, scouring it, spraying it with poultry dust, bathing your chickens in dish soap, covering them in DE (which I just happen to have to clean our pool).

You've never felt sadness until you've had a handful of wet chicken. Today I found the difference between ducks and chickens. A duck becomes powerful in water. A chicken, it just loses the will to live.

I bathed nine chickens in a row in the already filled up baby pool that had been sitting outside for a few days. Holding the chickens' wings turned out to be a crucial step, because at one point one of the chickens started flapping and then dish soap really bubbles up, it's like a plane was taking off in suds. One by one, the chickens went from being fluffy, jolly cluckers to being despondent water balloons of glum. The wet chicken is what the word "sorry" was invented for. I guess they don't like the weight of the water. You wash a chicken and then you set it on the grass and it just stands there like it's been stranded at a Greyhound bus station.

I shut up their chicken house (closed for renovations til the Mites decide to move out) and sent everybody over to the barn area where I'm sure tonight they'll be eaten by racoons but at least they'll have been washed up for the occasion. I dusted them all with DE, the white powder that is used in the pool filter, the feed store was out of poultry dust, which I Nathan I went on a run for and I guess I still need.

Did I mention I'm kind of over chickens? They're a sorry excuse for a horse. I like the 6 eggs I get a day, but the mites, the predators, you can't ride them, all of it - eh, I don't know. Then Barry was leaving and he was in a bad mood cause his boss is mean so he told me maybe there are too many animals around here. So I said (muttering) maybe there are too many husbands.

Then later he called to apologize and I thought he is alot easier to have around than the chickens. I barely have to feed him and I've never had to hold his wings down when washing him in the baby pool.It's just the animals keep me from focusing on how I can't get anything done or stop the kids from growing. They don't talk, and they give me surprise eggs. I like the surprise. Minus the mites.