なみのり ピカチュウ (o^ : ^o)

First and foremost, loika linked me to a translation of Satoshi Kon's written goodbye, which I share with all of you:

http://makikoitoh.com/journal/satoshi-kons-last-words

I started crying partway through it... It's so sad to read, but also insightful and meaningful. I feel a more closure now, at least, like I'm not just hanging here suspended, but instead that I can actually mourn for the loss of this amazing person. I'm sure I'll be sad for a while, as he was someone I truly admired and was inspired by. I feel like every time I watch any of his pieces I have a deeper appreciation for it and for his hard work, talent, and dedication to his stories.

It's kind of interesting to me that the last of my nine Millennium Actress cels I bought is one of Chiyoko in the astronaut suit, looking sad. It's not from the final scenes of the movie or anything, I believe it's from after Genya saves her, but it still seems symbolic in a way. I don't know, I'm reading into things too much again.

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I went to the intake center today, which was...well, I basically sorted mealworms the entire time. Believe it or not, sorting mealworms is an activity I greatly enjoy. (I also made a mess/had a bunch of humorous mishaps when trying to tube feed a band-tailed pigeon, but that's another matter, haha.) A little while into my mealworm-sorting, Jan came and brought the new order of 10k mealworms in.

They were ALL dead from the heat. As far as I could tell, every single one of them. :( Hopefully our group will be getting a free replacement order from the company, because...fail. Meanwhile, I froze some of the dead mealworms for use in making baby bird feeding formula. The other 8000 or so, though?

They went to my chickens. :D Needless to say, I have the happiest chickens EVER today! You should've seen the rate at which they were chugging down those mealworms! I watched them with great amusement for a good half-hour.

Speaking of chickens, I have a few girls and boys that are in need of names! Can you volunteer some ideas?

( Pictures of aforementioned unnamed birds, plus a few others. )

I really ought to take some better pictures of the chickens sometime, with more artistic value (these plus a lot more were all snapped in ten or fifteen minutes), but in the meantime hopefully these will suffice.

And it's 3 AM and I don't really feel like going to sleep but I don't know what I feel like doing otherwise. Hmmmm.

( Have some chicken/duck pics! )

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

On a happier note, ( Splash and her two chicks! +2 dog pictures. )

Also, I got into the two art classes I wanted to take! The teacher who teaches both classes is really nice and interesting, I have a feeling I'm going to learn a lot from him.

Now if only I can get into Japanese tomorrow, I'll have a great schedule!

Today was awesome! :D

Woke up and checked on my seramas. I picked up Splash to check on her eggs and a little poofy chick fell out of her feathers! ;0; D'awww, it's so teeny and cute! Striped, but light colored! I wonder what color it will turn out! I'm so excited that she hatched it. ♥ I'm checking on it more or less constantly out of sheer paranoia. I'll take pictures of it when it comes out from under mommy more often.

About ten minutes after I discovered the chick, my incubator came in the mail! I set it up, and it's now doing its twenty-four hour pre-run to stabilize the temperatures in it. I plan on sticking eggs in it tomorrow evening! It's an awesome incubator--has a big window on top, an auto-turner, it's pre-set to 99.5 degrees, and it's got a fan to circulate the heat. It can fit up to forty-one eggs! Not that I'll likely ever hatch that many of anything, but, uh, nice to have the extra room anyway~

Also, I had a songbird team meeting today, and I brought Tux-duck along. XD He got to stay out during the meeting and quack around and groom himself. Everyone was saying how beautiful he is! The songbird meeting went well, too--lots of good ideas, and a little at a time we're planning for this year's upcoming baby bird season. It's very complicated--much more complex than one would likely guess--but we're working things out the best we can.

That's all for now! Not a whole lot is going on other than poultry stuff, really.

Ryan and I went down to Yuba City to go shopping today. This was rather uneventful, really, although we went to a bunch of stores. Ryan bought a bunch of clothes, and I bought nothing other than a little chicken plush that clucks when you squeeze it and a Steamboy DVD for $3.

On the way back, though, I spotted a turkey vulture hunched over on the side of the road, not moving. I was concerned so I pulled over, grabbed an extra coat, and he allowed me to pick him up so I knew something was definitely wrong. He smelled terrible--like flesh and feces--but I held him the whole way to the raptor center and monitored his breathing. Luckily Mike Furtado had just gotten home and was about to examine him after we dropped him off in the clinic, put him in one of the cages, and filled out an intake form on him. There was another injured turkey vulture in the clinic who looked worse off than him, so that gives me hope that he has a chance. Also, he was still able to stand and remained alert during the car drive. I have my fingers crossed for him! It'll be so fulfilling and wonderful if he makes it. :D

( Here's a photo I took of him! )

Think good thoughts for him! I know I will be.

My Black Japanese rooster Yamikarasu passed away last night. :( I will miss him--he was a part of our family for ten years, since he was only two days old. He was the last of my original three bantams I got--Dovey, Yamikarasu, and Houou. He was such a beautiful rooster, and while he certainly had his fierce moments, he overall was a great rooster and protected his hens well, tolerated us humans, and he had a memorable, funny, little high-pitched crow. It will be so strange not having him around... No need to really offer sympathies. While I am certainly saddened by losing him and will miss his presence in the coop, I also know he lived a good, long life and had everything a rooster could ask for. There's not much more I could wish for him. I suspected he might be going downhill, as he began looking "droopy" a few months ago.

Look at how pretty he was:



Rest in peace, my Yami rooster. ♥ You will be missed, and never forgotten.

I am now beginning a hunt for a new rooster. Finding free roosters is no problem, but the thing is that I promised myself when he passed away I would get a rooster of a breed I really like. This way, if the rooster fathers chicks with any of my hens, he'll create some interesting and beautiful crossbreeds. I'm a chicken snob, so this search could take a while! I may go to Yuba City to see this one guy's poultry collection, though--I'll e-mail him and see if he might have any roosters of breeds I'd love to get. I would love a bantam phoenix, a sumatra, or...well, I'll have to go through my chicken breed encyclopedias again in search of a breed I want.

I'm really into getting serama chickens at some point (the smallest breed of chicken) and button quail, but I would have to figure out housing for them because they're too small to be in the coop with everyone else. I'm still thinking of getting chukar in the spring, too, to add to the coop. Just three or four, probably. I would LOVE to get some bantam ducks at some point (little tiny ducks--squee!), but again, I'm not sure where I would house them right now. XD

lineaalba has unintentionally gotten me all into searching for interesting exotic animals I could keep in California. Unfortunately, just about everything interesting is illegal here, aside from awesome pheasants (which I want so badly) that I can't get because we'd have to build another large coop and that's super expensive. :( I'm intrigued by chinchillas and might be interested in getting one or a pair, but I'm debating, as I would need a large cage and the temperature limitations make me a little nervous. I've wanted a chinchilla for a long time, but I will only get chinchillas if I REALLY get to a point where I feel sure I want one and have done all my research/am comfortable with what they require for a happy life.

My mom says no more animals (she always says no more animals), but I can't help but look around and do research on different animals at least! I just love looking at different species and reading all about them. I'm also thinking about pygmy goats, though then we'd have to build an enclosure or figure out a way to house them. Or doves! I love doves.

I don't know, basically I'm just looking up all kinds of different animals to amuse myself at the moment, though if I find an animal I really feel fits my lifestyle, I may end up with something or another in a few weeks or months or whatever. I can't help it--I'm just one of those people who is so interested in animals that I like to experience having all kinds of different species. Of course, I know to stop when I reach a maximum amount that I can care for while still keeping their quality of life very high. For instance, I know that having another dog right now would be too much for me and my family.

I DO get to search for a rooster definitely, so that will help keep me occupied and control my obsessive pet-searching tendencies.

I find more and more that poultry and gamebirds are what I keep going back to as far as "oddball" pets go. I really, really enjoy raising them, spending time with them, learning about them, and so on. There are so many different varieties of poultry and gamebirds, many of which are incredibly gorgeous and amazing, and some species of poultry make such great pets and are quite friendly and tame, but are also fairly low maintenance. I like that my chickens, ducks, and guinea fowl are fun to handle and don't mind being handled, but if I don't have time to handle them or decide not to for whatever reason, they don't mind not being handled either! They're happy either way, and because I have a large enough coop and let them out to wander the yard a few times a week, I don't feel guilty about keeping them "caged". My whole flock of chickens, guinea fowl, and ducks is about twenty minutes of work a day, with occasionally more than that when the coop needs cleaning or I have to add leaves to stop it from getting too muddy. Poultry are just so nice! When I own property, I'm definitely going to have poultry and gamebird keeping as a major hobby. A very large chicken coop or a few chicken coops so I can keep all the breeds I want, some separate enclosures for different types of pheasants, quail, and other weird birds like that, and so on. Also, a fennec fox and my lovely Honey, and I'm sure other critters that I end up with, and I will be happy as can be.

We're getting another horse soon, a two-year-old thoroughbred named Taxman. I think mom is fostering him for now, but plans on probably adopting him. I'll take pictures of him (as well as our other horse, Rivi) when he comes. While I love horses, they're more my mom's thing than mine, but I still like to spend time with our horses, give them carrots, and take pictures of them. Our thoroughbred gelding Rivi is so pretty!

On a non-animal note (I am forcing myself to stop rambling about animals for now), I am 45k into my NaNo, and planning on getting another 2-3k tonight! I will probably have my 50k finished tomorrow. :O