The Cannon Farm is growing...

Our whole family really enjoys animals.  If you know us at all, you knew it wouldn't be long until we began acquiring pets....

First we got Duchess, our beloved Javanese Golden Retriever.  (No that's not a real breed...though it probably should be.)  She's a great family pet and we all really love her.  She's not quite full grown and still acts like a puppy much of the time. Her favorite pastime is catching stuff - huge locusts, frogs, small birds, geckos, rats, shrews, butterflies - really, anything that moves. But she's sweet - those animals she's catching are meant to be her playmates and she doesn't really mean to bite them in half!  She also serves as a great guard dog.  You probably think I'm joking but I am very serious.  People here are terrified of her!  I mean really, really terrified. This is good for two reasons - 1) nobody will try to enter our yard to steal something and 2) nobody would be brave enough to steal the dog for their dinner!  At least, that is what we are hoping....

Last week, we got the bunny.  I know this seems counter intuitive after my little description above of our dog's odd hunting/playing behavior with other small creatures.  Okay it is counter intuitive.  But, well, we thought we'd give it a try anyway.  So far, so good, although that bunny has been licked more times than I'm sure she felt was necessary.  We named our adorable fluffy white bunny something very Indonesian - Snowflake! She's (or maybe he's) a really sweet bunny with more personality than I ever saw in any of my pet bunnies.  She is almost like a kitty in the way she loves to be held and pet.  Very cute! 

And then there were chicks.  I know, right?  We just bought our dog some chicken nuggets to help get the rabbit down, didn't we?  Anyway, this was Sean's project, though I suppose I planted it when we were back in Colorado after seeing my parents' pretty chickens again.  We don't necessarily need chickens here.  Like, at all.  But it's a fun project and the little chicks are pretty cute...this week anyway.  We'll see how this goes - I absolutely LOVE having chickens back in the States but the breeds here are so stinking ugly that I'm not sure that the fresh eggs are even worth it to me.  I see chickens back home and I think, "what a beautiful chicken all fluffy and fat" but here all I think is, "that right there is the missing link between birds and dinosaurs all featherless from the neck up and gangly looking."  Here's hoping lots of feed and fresh water and exercise (running from the dog) will make these ones somewhat pretty.  

Sean did build some really nice cage/hutch/coop type things, didn't he?  He proudly proclaimed when he was done with the chicken coop that he was going to be featured on some hippy blog somewhere for this.  It is very form and function and creative and smart.  He even built them a ladder.  And all we have to do is lift a little door to get the eggs out...assuming there ever are any.  I'm proud of my husband's Chicken Ranching skillz, I really am.  It's good to see him having such fun building stuff and figuring out all that needs to be done to help these creatures survive.  And the girls are in baby animal heaven.

Now to just keep all our "livestock" alive....