The Great Chicken Mystery

This post also appears on my book site http://www.joycedavisbooks.blogspot.com

No sense going there, it is just a landing site for anyone who searches for my name and my book. Do you think I landed in the wrong place?

And now onto the mystery...It began on the Day after Thanksgiving. 

Both my wonderful pet hens mysteriously died. Same day. They were alive in the morning, dead in the evening. What are the chances of that unless it was something they ate? My tame hens, one would sit on my lap, the other was more stand-off-ish. Both laid the most delicious, beautiful eggs, egg yolks orange as a six-year-old's sun drawing. Gone. Rats.

I had given the chickens vegetable scraps the day before. Being Thanksgiving I thought I was giving them a treat. After finding them dead, I researched and found that potato skins can be toxic to chickens. Only the green-skinned potatoes they said.  My potato skins weren’t green, but the chickens were dead, and I suspected the potatoes were the culprits. How many people had fed potato peelings to chickens? Tons I bet. Still mine were dead.

Three months later:

This pertains really: On Jan 26 I decided to query an agent. I found Elizabeth Krach of Kimberly Cameron and Associates who said “I wish I had my own Jon Krakauer.”

Who in the heck is Jon Krakauer?

Oh, he was the author of Into the Wild, the story about Chris McCandless, who gave away his money, burned his wallet and went to the wilds of Alaska where he lived off the land and journaled his findings, including the food he ate. On July 30, 1992 he wrote, “Extremely weak. Fault of potato seed. Much trouble just to stand up. Starving. Great jeopardy.”

Before this entry, there's nothing to suggest he was in trouble. After that, there were other signs in his journal that he was in big trouble. And then a little over three weeks later, on August 18, he crawled in the back of the bus and died."

Krahauer, wanted to know if the ending of his book was accurate. Was it in fact the wild potato seeds that did in McCandless? He took wild potato seeds to a chemist.

"These are not poisonous," said the chemist.

Hum. What now? 

Enter a reader:

After reading Into the Wild, Rod Hamilton had an Ah Ha moment. He knew that Jews in concentration camps were fed the seed of the chick pea, eaten for centuries, but known to contain a substance called ODAP which under certain conditions, is toxic. 

Wild potato seeds also contain ODAP.  In a mal-nourished body the seeds containing ODAP cause paralysis and death. My chickens were molting and thin, obviously struggling to keep fit as winter was coming on.

The fault, I believe, lies in the potato skins...and skinny chickens. (I kept their feeder full.) No chicken of mine will ever be fed potato skins, and now I wonder about anyone eating them.

Rail, Sea, or Land

You guys have to watch this—no you don’t have to--it just knocked my socks off.

I know this isn’t giving you information.

It isn’t giving advice.

It isn’t about a contribution to society—but then maybe it is…

This story hit me between the eyes, or rather in the heart.

It is about love and caring, concern and even skill, and it comes from a monkey. It’s on YouTube. I stumbled upon it. I know, you can do your own stumbling, but I couldn’t resist.

A monkey was electrocuted at a subway station and was lying completely unconscious in the center corridor between two train tracks.

You can watch it here:  

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/dec/22/monkey-saves-dying-friend-train-station-india-video

Don't read the next paragraph is you want to watch the You tube. It's the Reader's digest Version.

Another monkey came up to the unconscious monkey, grabbed it, shook it, turned it over, worked on resuscitating it, dumped it in water that was puddling over the edge of a rail. The electrocuted monkey was like a rag doll, showing no sign of life. The rescuing monkey kept working on him. FOR TWENTY MINUTES. Finally the electrocuted monkey did rally, and at first was like a drunken sailor, then recovered somewhat. The video ended with the rescuing monkey patting the electrocuted one on the back. Probably humans probably would have pronounced him dead long before twenty minutes.

Success!

MOB (Man Over Board);

Have you heard this one? A passenger tumbled off a balcony of a Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship. No bells or whistles went off, no one saw him. He floated in the ocean for about five hours…and a Disney Cruise Ship came along that same corridor, a passenger spotted a man in the water, (imagine) and the Disney crew saved him.

Long live Disney!

P.S. Disney Cruise lines have a detection device that is an automatic man overboard detection technology. It uses radar and sensors to establish a perimeter around a ship. The Royal Caribbean Cruise line does not.

Success!

On Land:

My chiropractor told me I wouldn’t have any back problems if I lived on the moon. Well, I have recently become a Real Estate Agent, but I don’t believe I will investigate any property on the moon. Good ole planet earth. I’ll take my chances here.

Remember us if you ever decide to sell your house or want to buy one. No hard sale tactics, just good old win/win. You want to buy, someone wants to sell, Bingo. You want to sell, someone wants to buy. Ditto.

We are The Pink Flamingo Real Estate Team, at your service. 1 814-9613 ext 124

Coming soon to a yard near you: 

 http://pink-flamingo.wix.com/real-estate

How about joining me for the 90 Day Millionaire Challenge? http://www.the90daymillionairechallenge.blogspot.com 

I began it once, going at it again, just posted  "If we keep on believing that money doesn’t matter…" sign up to be a part of the process 

jewellshappytrails@gmail.com 
Say $, or millionaire, or something that will identify you.

Don't Grow Up

Remember when you were a kid and you believed that anything was possible?

One week you were going to grow up and ride a rocket ship to the moon. Another and this was my dream, that I would own a horse ranch and hire handsome men to run it.

One of my daughters couldn’t wait to grow up. The trouble was, she found when grown up that it wasn’t much fun.

How do we get the fun back? How do we pull back those dreams that sustained us on long winter nights?

I learned this from a horse trainer—let’s call him a horse gentler, for that is what he preferred. He said after he got a macho-etocomy, he realized that a dance partner doesn’t want to be pulled to their feet and forced around the dance floor--or slapped, or pulled by ropes. A horse, he said, will respond to pressure no stronger than you can put on your eyeball.  (Did you know that a horse’s hide is seven times more sensitive than a human’s?) The point of this that whatever the rank and file are doing, chances are you ought to do the opposite. (Stroke a horse, don’t slap it.)

I’m trying. (Yoda said, “Don’t try, do.) Yet we know when we are standing on the brink of an abyss we quiver a bit, we become immobilized, our brain becomes oatmeal.

You great readers who have been with me for a while know that I studied to become a Real Estate Agent.  I passed those horrible exams, I had my background checked, and all my little fingers finger-printed. I paid my dues. I backed off, I tested the water. Well now I have signed with a Brokerage, I’m on the brink, I don’t know what to do next.  I know that some of the old ways of operating do not work as efficiently as they once did. I don’t want to become establishment.

What is the opposite?

P.S.

Daughter and I are The Pink Flamingo Real Estate Team. Now doesn’t having a For Sale sign in your yard with a pink flamingo on it sound outrageous enough to garner attention?

 “Next time I’m really going to put my foot down.”

Thank you for following me all you wonderful people.