Crack Cocaine and Saturday Night Fever

I know it might seem impossible to correlate my title with anything as vanilla as a small town farm and some run of the mill animal inhabitants of said farm.  I really couldn’t blame you if you are wondering if I have cabin fever or have some kind of snow madness…… snow…. that’s a story for another time.

But I can assure you….. I am completely sane…. I still hold down a job, I have friends that think I am perfectly normal (for now), and my family loves me….mostly.   What everyone is going to find so shocking is that I have to admit to supplying my rabbits with what I refer to ask crack cocaine – rabbit style.   I totally blame my husband for setting me on this path to start with.  Not that I am not taking responsibility for my own actions – but he started it!!!

You see….. I have told you that the chickens were always his thing… so I wanted to be the rabbit mistress to his lord of the chickens. His chickens worship him!  They know they owe him for the Taj Mahal coop, the killer dust baths, the regular oyster shells and the daily hand prepared treats of veggie bits and sometimes rice or little bits of bread.  These are some seriously happy chickens, they follow him around like little lemmings, they see him coming across the field and they stand like little soldiers just knowing that he has something wonderful for them.  I have even heard them purr when he talks to them.  Yes, chickens purr… I have heard it myself.  

So what’s a girl to do?!!  I couldn’t do any less for my lovely rabbits!  As the winter got colder and colder (read bitter, bitter cold here), we needed to make sure that the rabbits had enough calories to burn to help keep them warm – and ya gotta know hay and alfalfa pellets is NOT going to cut it.  Not good enough to make me the queen of the rabbits that’s for sure!  Oh we add apple pieces and carrots but I needed something above and beyond that!  Then we found it!  As simple as you please, we threw in a couple of Trisket crackers with the apples and the rabbits went crazy!  Instant addiction!  They are currently so addicted to the crackers – that they get visibly excited when I walk into the rabbitry with my treat bowl, they nudge my hand looking for them, and they even snatch them out of my hand if I don’t put them down fast enough!  They actually look exactly like a drug addict grabbing for their next fix….. a little worried that I may have started a life long habit for them…. but rest assured that I am definitely the rabbit queen!!

Now how exactly does any of that tie to Saturday Night Fever…..???  It’s like this…. The rabbitry is right beside the chicken coop.  The chickens come streaming out of the coop as soon as you open the door and they mostly head right over to visit with the rabbits.  Actually I think the little buggers are looking to see if they can steal some of their treats, but I have also come to believe that they like hanging out together.  It’s a cozy spot for sure.  We put a huge tarp over the whole thing in the fall – to help keep the snow and the wind out over the winter.  Then put up a couple of strings of Christmas lights to help make it easier to move around in there once it started getting dark so early in the fall.  The little pieces of hay fall through the mesh in the rabbit hutches and the chickens just love to scratch around in it – it keeps them busy.  Chuck doesn’t miss a trick here either!  He makes sure that they have some of their chicken scratch and their treats to indulge in while they are there, and some bowls of fresh water too…. so they don’t get parched!  So when you put it all together, you have a cozy, softly lit space full of lovely soft hay, access to food and water and lots of little crannies to settle in.  Just add music and you got yourself a disco!

It is seriously funny to watch them all in this space.  The rabbits are chillin’ out with their crack cocaine crackers and the chickens are scratch dancing in the hay, sipping fresh farm water, and nibbling chicken treats!!  Big Al, our big black rooster is the bouncer…. he hangs there all the time and calls the ladies over when the treats arrive…. and they come running.  They hate to walk in the snow, so Chuck spreads hay from the door of the coop through the trees to the rabbitry.  It’s a bit narrow there, so they follow each other single file… like a line up to get into the disco.

And I am 18 all over again….!!!