spoken for

A good friend of mine posted in her MySpace blog today about something we did when we were younger, well, a few things really. It cracks me up because the main thing she’s talking about I so don’t even remember at all.

Since I am not sure how MySpace permalinks work, or want to link to my MySpace for that matter (haha), here’s what she posted:

and now a story…

so, once when i was much younger than i am now, my friend valerie invited me over to her house to spend the night. at this point (and yes i know i am dating myself) the internet had only been around for a very short time and we were sucked in and we would always go in chat rooms and start crap with people. at any rate, we met this guy named mark something. he was from oregon and he was kind of a nerd, but we talked to him anyway. well, val ended up either giving him her number or she got his, either way, we decided to call this kid and talk to him on the phone for like two hours…we quit talking to him after we heard him having sex either with or without someone else on the phone once…that was just a side note. the real story is that when i went to spend the night at valerie’s house (and spending the night there was fun ’cause they ate weird stuff like spaghetti with no sauce and she had a COUCH in her room, which i thought was way cool) we thought it would be really fun to spend the night in the chicken house. (is that what they’re called? chicken houses?) whatever the little building is that chickens live in. there weren’t chickens living there at the time, so we slept in there. we brought a tv and a flashlight. it was VERY cold. she doesn’t remember doing this, but i do and i wanted to share it with all of you.

also, back in my chatroom phase i met this guy and his sn was ACTREEL and he said his name was bruce ducat and he said he went to webster university and that he was the career manager for rider strong - shawn from boy meets world. i think he was full of shit, but i believed him then. he is probably one of those guys dateline caught. boy did i love rider strong! it was a sad obsession.

which reminds me…this one time stephenie came over and she was in love with jonathan brandis and i loved rider strong (we always used to read Bop and Teen Beat and Tiger Beat so we could get the cool posters!) and so we tried to call them and we wrote them letters and put our phone numbers on them so they could call us…because we were 13 and stupid. about a month later, some guy called me and said he was jonathan brandis and that i had written him a letter and wanted him to call me. i didn’t believe him so i hung up. now i will never know who it was! and he’s dead so i can’t ask…

To which I responded:

LOL To clear something up though, we met Mark at YOUR house! I didn’t have internet until right after 10th grade. :-) And on the same note, how’s it going, Kelly? :-D We talked to him for like a year or so before that last fatal phone call you know! And the letters, lol. We were crazy. I remember why we messaged him in the first place, his profile said Mark from Hillsboro! lol

And, yeah, the chicken house, I so don’t remember it and I don’t know why! Usually I remember crap like that. Did my bro stay in there with us? It’s so funny that we did that. I haven’t been in there in about 7 years haha.

AND! I still sometimes eat spaghetti without sauce! I’m the only one in my family that’s ever done that though.

And finally, this IS the Bay Area!!!! (You know, it’s right out there on the grassy knoll!)

So, yes, now you know, my parents have a chicken house. For that matter, so do my in-laws. My mom doesn’t have any more chickens though, she gave the last ones to my mother-in-law in 2003. I’m not even sure what they do with the chicken house anymore, it’s either storage, or in the tear-down list. Mom’s doing all sorts of stuff to their house, even like taking down the front yard fence, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the chicken house was next on the list.

The chicken house was uber cool, though. My daddy and mommy built it and it was about 8 feet by 8 feet or a little less. It had an attached yard on it that was surrounded by chicken wire so they could get some fresh air. There were little nesting boxes at waist-level all through the yard and there was a people-size door to get into the house then one to the yard and the chickens had their own little door to the yard that could be locked shut in bad weather. There was electric wire surrounding the outside of the yard, to keep out the numerous oppossums and foxes and whatever else might have wanted to eat the chickens. That would include the bouvier we used to have even though it couldn’t have kept him out - he broke through a wooden picket fence once to get to my brother’s rabbit. I would have used one of my own photos to illustrate a bouvier but I’d have to go looking through scrapbooks and the basement for that, maybe later. So that is someone else’s photo, as you can see. They are big dogs.

I did, however, find this photo:

Yup, that’s me there, third from the left. I know! What a freaking dork! :) So, yes, at one time, we also had a pot bellied pig! He was a mess but oh, so sweet. We adored him. The dog in my lap was my first pet.

Also during the course of my life with my parents…

My mom and dad got a cow from my grandpa to fatten up for butchering, her name was Magic. Grandpa hadn’t been able to breed her and so he was willing to sell her at a lower price. Turned out she was pregnant and we ended up with a sweet little bull named T-Bone. He was this creamy tan color and was so tame, he’d let us pet him. We could mostly pet the cow, too, but she wasn’t quite as friendly. And, in fact, strangers creeped her out. Once I took a friend into the field, we were going to walk the trails through the woods around the field and the cow totally freaked out and started bucking all over. It was really very scary, we ran as fast as we could and hid behind a tree until she calmed down. I don’t think we got to walk the trail.

Over the years my brother (1st on left) has owned strange animals such as newts and other things I don’t even remember. My other brother had hermit crabs at one point and various woodsy bugs. He lost a snail in the house once. My mom was really mad. After that they had to keep all their creepy crawlies in the garage. I found the snail a week later - 3/4 of the way up the living room wall with a trail behind it to complete the picture.

My mother had geese. They arrived by mail. She was the first to open the box, the first they saw, and so she became their mother. They hated the rest of us. There were three kinds in the box, several Toulouse, one I think that would be called a Huoyan, and one that’s commonly known as a Chinese goose (white). The Chinese was sickly, he died a couple of days later. The others grew up and eventually inter-bred until we had these white grey things that were just as mean as the others. At one time, a Canada lived with us. He was the worst. Supposedly these geese are supposed to have the highest tollerance for people, but I guess he didn’t like us because he wasn’t domesticated. He wasn’t ours either, he just decided one day that he wanted to hang with our geese so we fed him. You know, whatever. But there was one day, and I swear this is true. I got home from work and walked around to the back of the car and could see him about 30 feet away, staring at me. As I turned my back to get in the trunk I heard a noise and turned around. The goose was running towards me and he stopped the second I turned around. I turned back to the trunk and had to turn around really quickly again, because again he was running towards me. He was in full attack mode. I grabbed what I needed, slammed the trunk, and ran to the house. Did you know geese hiss? You city people may not have known that. ;-)

A funny story about goose eggs… Sometimes the eggs they lay don’t ever get to hatching. Maybe the goose neglects them or the babies die before they can hatch, or whatever. One year this happened. The eggs were there for a loooong time. Longer than needed to hatch. So one day Dad goes to check it out. He takes either another egg or a little rock and oh, ever so gently taps the other egg. Suddenly, it exploded. And they stunk so.freaking.bad. So, so bad. And, it was all over my dad in this ewwie green goo. So, of course, he goes right in the house to clean up yelling, “don’t touch me!! Get out of my way!” So the eggs were bad - they had to be disposed of, right? To try and avoid the same situation, among other methods, my brother stood about 30 feet away and threw rocks at them. haha

Both my brother and I had a hamster at one point. I had a gerbil before that. When my cousin was there, it chewed off the end of its tail. We figured this was because she was mean to it after it bit her and she held it by the tip of its tail and hit it. My dad said later it was because I didn’t feed it. I said he was crazy.

My brother (2nd from left) had a goat. This goat led to my sister and a 911 call being in the same sentance once. We used to tie the goat to the wagon and let him pull one of us older ones with one of the younger ones around while the other older one led. We were changing “drivers” once and I had my foot steadying the wagon so my brother could get in when the goat took off without us. He used to think the grass was always greener on the other side. Well, my sister was still in the wagon and they ran down the driveway, nearly hitting the barbed-wire fence, until they stopped at the edge of the weeds where he suddenly stopped and started eating. My sister flew out of the wagon and landed on her face on the rock driveway. She was screaming - which I know now is a good sign. I got to the scene of the accident first, picked her up, and ran to the house. She was as stiff as a board, I had to turn sideways to get her through the front door. My dad layed her on the floor and my mom called 911. She screamed the whole time. My brother and I were terrified. The ambulance came and took her and our mom away, Dad followed with the rest of us. We could tell Dad was upset and we thought he was mad at us. We know now he wasn’t, just worried about the sis, and we never got “in trouble” - afterall, it was an accident and we hadn’t been doing anything wrong (though we never did it again after that). We spent the night at the doctor’s house and the next morning, the three of us were relieved to find out we were okay. My dad had been wearing a vertically green and white striped shirt - the doctor’s wife was surprisingly able to get all the blood out of it. He’s worn that shirt in recent years. It reminds me of that horrible day. Of course, she lived and recovered quite nicely. She does, however, have a scar right below her hairline on the right side of her forehead to remind us all how stupid we were.

Then, of course, there were the numerous other dogs and the cats that used to hang around. One cat I had, Miranda, came to be mine when I thought I saw a cat in the tree across the street but couldn’t be sure if it was a cat or a bump on the tree. I simply said, “kitty kitty?” and I had a cat. She had to be put down later, though. Found a bat in the daytime and then passed it along to our second bouvier. Mom and dad had no choice but to call the state who had them send in the dog for testing of rabies and had us cage the cat for observation. My dad was soon advised to have the cat put down, just in case, and after several weeks, the rabies tests on the dog came back negative - no rabies. My mom was very upset. You see, they test for rabies by examining the brain… after the animal is put down. But you know, our family’s safety was at risk, mom did what she had to. But she loved that dog.

I mentioned we had rabbits, didn’t I? I don’t even remember where the first one came from, but that first bouvier dog killed her. He got loose one day then dug under to get in her pen which was actually what is known as a “dog pen” - more than enough room for a rabbit but apparently not good enough to keep out a bouvier. The bouvier was really a good dog, but he just had trouble adjusting to the fact that there were animals around he couldn’t touch - afterall, we’d gotten him first. My brother got more rabbits later, after he spent a long time building hutches for them. That’s when the dog broke through the fence to get to them, but he didn’t, they were safe in the hutches. He had two of them, I know one was named Curley. Eventually, when it got time for him to go to college, he gave them to my in-laws, where they still live today.

Ooooh I almost forgot about the guinea hens. I almost hate these things, they are so annoying. I accidentally killed one, too, when I was about 10. Was riding my bike through the yard and went to scare them away as usual. Only, this time, one of them was stupid and instead of getting out of the way it decided to get its neck stuck in my spokes. I was pretty upset. These things are annoying though. Unless you’ve heard their calls… you will never understand.

We had a racoon once, for about two days. It got caught in one of my brother’s live traps. And, boy, was that thing mean!! First and only time I’ve seen one of those buggers up close. It was one mean thing. It got caught when we were trying to catch the wild (and also mean) cat that was terrorizing my mom’s chickens…

Well, I do think that’s enough. I swear, I only really wanted to post about sleeping in the chicken house. You know, it was clean - freshly built at that time.

If you’ve read this far? I love you. And now you know of the zoo I grew up in.