You Can't Make This Stuff Up...

Happy New Year's Eve! Both Kyle and I look forward to this day every year. This one however, will go down in history...

It started off as a normal day. As soon as the alarm went off, I sent my Kyle out to check for a new egg (it was his turn to feel the excitement I felt yesterday, plus it was a ploy to buy me a couple extra minutes in bed)! I am not a morning person. He came in telling me that Drama Queen Jolene was hanging out in the nesting box, but no egg. Deciding we'd check back later, we ate some breakfast, and took Big D out to the dog park for an hour.

We were both eager to check on the girls when we got home. Kyle went ahead and checked... and sure enough! There was another egg. We were both so excited! As he cleaned it off and placed it in the refrigerator I gave the girls some scratch and gently stroked their soft, soft feathers.

Since Kyle was home with me, I asked if he would help me place a zip tie loosely around one of Jolene's feet (so we could tell the difference between the two Buff Brahmas). I went into the barn to find a sturdy zip tie, when a gust of wind slammed the door shut, triggering the lock latch, thus locking me in the barn (there is no door handle on the inside of the barn door). Kyle (outside the barn) had a good laugh at my expense, and warned me never to let this happen again, showing me the correct way to secure the doors so this wouldn't ever happen again. He came in the barn to help me find a pair of scissors... when another gust of wind slammed the doors shut on both of us- locking us both inside the barn.

Pointing out the irony of our predicament, we both had a good laugh at the situation. Then it dawned on me that my three hens were free-ranging outside- alone (being the over-protective hen keeper that I am, and the fact that our neighborhood dogs are also "free range," leaving my little flock unattended is very frightening). I could hear them clucking and "BaGAOKing" happily outside... so I managed to keep my thoughts on the up and up, and stay positive. We did have chicken feed, and scratch mixed with dry oatmeal in the barn if we needed sustenance... so I wasn't worried.

Kyle thankfully had his cell phone. So while he turned into the bean-counter version of "MacGyver," I gleefully helped the situation by taking cell-phone photos of us. The brief photography session ended abruptly as I heard the dreaded beep-beep of the low-battery signal. Knowing this could really turn serious... we immediately called every neighbor we knew. We started with the neighbors closest to us... then worked out way down our road. After four calls and four, "we'll explain later" conversations, everyone seemed to be away. We had one more house on our list of neighbor friends, and thank the Lord he was home. He had a good laugh at us, as we did at ourselves!

We were locked in for a good 'bout of time, which wasn't too bad. It could have been much worse. But tonight we'll be ringing in the New Year outside the barn, and fixing the lock latch to avoid future less-humorous "catastrophes."