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Posts Tagged ‘animals’

Diary #826

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on April 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Though I’ve opened the nursery every morning for over a week now, the pullets are still largely uninterested in coming out yet. This is not unusual; there was a flurry of activity on the first day which resulted in one of the pullets going missing, but since then they have stayed where they feel safe.  That includes the missing one; Wednesday I needed to drive into Seattle, so I planned to let them stay in the nursery that day. But when I went out to check their food and water, whom should I find wandering around the chicken yard but the missing pullet, very hungry and very vocal, but otherwise none the worse for wear.  I was able to catch her and put her in with the others, and there she has stayed since.  I have no idea where she went; I spent over an hour looking for her the day she vanished, to no avail.  My best guess is that she managed to get through the narrow gap under the ramp and had been hiding under the house for three days; even though I crawled under there with a flashlight as part of the search, it’s a large area and even a thorough, hours-long search wouldn’t have sufficed to peer into every space under there large enough for a pullet.  I’m just glad I didn’t lose her, and choose to view her mysterious return as a good omen for this year.

 

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Mother Riley Meets Throwback Thursday

Posted in Miscellaneous, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , on April 23, 2026| Leave a Comment »

I actually like winter, as one of four well-defined seasons; what I do not like is when winter is a bad guest which arrives earlier than it is supposed to or overstays its welcome.
–  “Rain, Rain, Go Away”

Would that all of us could leave this earth so gently.  –  “Diary #668”

911…systems treat cops like Spam in the famous Monty Python sketch: a form of pork that you get with every order whether you like it or not.  –  “Dangerous Spam”

Smuggling is, was, and always will be a social good, providing to individuals what collectives and/or tyrants wish to deny to them or bleed them for wanting.  –  “The Tweets Go On“

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Diary #825

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on April 21, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Somehow, within three hours of letting the pullets out on Sunday, one of them managed to vanish.  As you can see, one hasn’t left the nursery and two are huddled in the corner fretting (not an unusual behavior for the first week or so after they’re out).  The turkey chick is more bold, wandering around the entire chicken yard.  But there’s no sign of the fourth pullet.  She’s not anywhere in the chicken yard, nor nearby outside, nor under the house, and I neither heard a ruckus nor found feathers which would indicate that something got her.  My guess is that she managed to fly over the fence and ran off to hide in the underbrush, but I have no evidence for that; I reckon it’s just one of those things that happens when one keeps poultry.

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In the Tweet of the Night

Posted in Biography, Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, Music, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, Words, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 20, 2026| 1 Comment »

Change one single vowel in this headline, and it would be a VERY different story.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-20T01:59:52.797Z

Probably the same way that holding a knife to a child's throat can open a guarded door.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-20T18:03:29.896Z

Beware of Davros.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-25T03:17:35.675Z

#3 is a very, very bad idea.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-25T17:50:01.254Z

Spring this on family members in New Orleans, and they may not stop at disowning* you.*And disowning people is mighty difficult under Napoleonic Code.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-26T17:26:22.068Z

It's fascinating to watch men with severe, easily-recognized mental illnesses publicly blaming others' mental illness on behaviors that the speakers are incapable of due to their own undiagnosed, untreated psychopathologies.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-27T17:09:35.827Z

My teen self would be confused by this.1981 Maggie: So there are new "Star Trek" shows all the time, but you haven't watched one in 20 years?2026 Maggie: CorrectM81: Ditto "Star Wars"?M26: YepM81: Plus all kinds of D&D fantasy stuff?M26: Right again.M81: I DON'T KNOW YOU

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-28T17:19:00.870Z

Reporters: doing something willfully is not a "failure", regardless of what politicians call it. If a party refuses to comply with some illegal diktat, that party has not *failed* to comply with said diktat; he has REFUSED to comply. The former is an omission; the latter an active rejection.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-29T16:55:44.729Z

This monster's face appears to have been designed by Jack Pierce. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm06823…

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-30T17:38:45.538Z

"Dabbled in cross-dressing" makes it sound like alchemy or some other occult practice.(Yes, I know about the shamans and mystery religions; this isn't that, so let's not)

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-03-31T17:37:38.961Z

Oh please, PLEASE let them use a chatbot as architect, so we can have a "Galloping Gertie" moment on live TV soon after it's done.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-01T17:35:58.519Z

This is how partisanism warps minds.Distrust of politicians *in general* for wholly rational reasons is subjected to the duopoly's Procrustean bed, then for 21st century readers must be trivialized & infantilized. So anarchists & true libertarians are described by the asinine tag "double haters".

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-03T17:28:10.591Z

WAAAAAAAAAH! I'VE POOPED MYSELF AND I DEMAND SOMEONE CHANGE IT! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-04T17:16:42.139Z

Please, people, I beg you not to rely on spellcheckers at the cost of your own vocabulary skills.Trade languages have nothing to do with birds.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-07T17:10:46.810Z

Meanwhile, books on my shelves which were published as far back as the 1920s, and which I purchased as far back as the 1970s, are still 100% readable. And all I have to do to access them is walk over to my bookshelves.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-08T17:13:17.853Z

Due to the high volume of "You were right all along" emails, I will not be responding to them individually. Thank you for your understanding.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-08T17:29:33.587Z

A friend who grew up on Country/Western was unfamiliar with Zeppelin, and when "Ramble On" came on she asked me what it was about. I replied, "A dude who gets his girlfriend stolen by Gollum."

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-10T07:34:41.637Z

Trump is someone who consistently cheats at Solitaire and still repeatedly loses, and when he's done the deck only has about 49 cards. And some of those are from kids' game decks, like one with a picture of an old maid.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-12T17:44:13.156Z

 

We need Captain Kirk.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-13T03:26:13.653Z

If you want to reveal a crypto-authoritarian, just start him talking about virtually anything to do with cars.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-13T17:21:33.262Z

THIS.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-16T17:53:47.686Z

Your regular reminder that it is 100% legal to fictionally depict murder, rape, and mayhem in movies.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-17T17:19:44.529Z

I especially love that the stupid thing flew apart on impact.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-17T19:17:10.473Z

First Palantir came for the sex workers, but nobody cared because "sex trafficking".Then Palantir came for young minority men, and nobody cared because "gangs".Then Palantir came for migrants, and nobody cared because "illegals".Now it's coming for you, and I think you know the rest.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-04-19T17:28:11.213Z

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Links #824

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 19, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Hold the bus!  –  The Banana Splits

Since I’ve already featured the H.R. Pufnstuf theme and Land of the Lost theme before, I decided to feature the opening & closing to The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, the first Saturday morning show to feature the Krofft puppets.  As a wee lass my mother enrolled me in the Banana Splits fan club, and I had the various club materials for years after the show went off the air.  And it was not unusual for Grace to use one of their catchphrases, “Hold the bus!”  The links above the video were provided by Franklin Harris, Ryan Marino, Jesse Walker, Ryan Cooper, Walter Olson, Radley Balko, and Jessica Pishko, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Diary #824

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on April 14, 2026| Leave a Comment »

For the past two weeks, the pullets have lived in their nursery in the henhouse; the heat lamp is still on 24 hours a day, and every day about noon or so I top off their food and change their water.  This was taken immediately after doing that, which is why you can hear the water burping as the tray fills up.  The reason it’s up on the cinder block is to keep them from clogging it up with shavings when they scratch; at this stage it’s the feeder which gets clogged instead, but as long as I clean it once a day it isn’t bad enough to stop them from eating.  You can see that the turkey chick has now caught up with the pullets, and by the time they’re out of the nursery completely on May 17th, it will be noticeably larger.  The next change, however, will be this coming Sunday; the heat lamp will go on the timer so it’s only on at night, and in the daytime I’ll open up the coop as it is in this video, then herd them back inside every evening.  Every two days I’ll shorten the timer by half an hour, so their hours of darkness will slowly increase until it’s time to shut off the lamp for the summer, and by that time the hens will have stopped trying to harass them, and we’ll be settled into our routine until it starts to change again in late September.

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Diary #823

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on April 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »

As you can see, the chicks are in the nursery now.  And even though the turkey is two weeks younger than the chickens, she’s nearly as big already.  They’ll be confined full-time for two more weeks, then starting on the 19th they’ll be allowed to roam around the chicken yard during the day and only confined at night.  Since they’re faster than the adult hens they can get away from aggressive hens in the daytime, whereas at night the door is closed so they’re cooped up in a small space.  But after being near them for seven weeks, the adults generally lose interest, so I don’t have a pecking problem.  And despite the turkey being younger, her (?) size will soon protect her.

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Throwback Thursday After Midnight

Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , on April 2, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Censorship [is] wildly popular among…those who believe the most terrifying fact of the world is that others beside themselves have free will.
–  “Ship of Fools”

 

[In contrast with the] cost…[of] second-rate, weeks-old grocery store eggs…two hours of literally shoveling shit twice a year…begins to seem like a good bargain indeed.  –  “Diary #665”

 

“Nonprofit” merely refers to the organization; those who run it often make plenty of profit.  –  “Schadenfreude (#1425)”

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Diary #822

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on March 31, 2026| Leave a Comment »

As you can see, Axel and Speck are now friends.  I can’t really claim any credit; Speck was the one who made all the overtures and slowly got him used to her presence.  I apologize for this being a poorly-composed picture; that lump under the blanket is my leg, so if I’d tried to get up to catch the shot from a different angle, they might’ve moved.  Alas, Axel has not stopped being aggressive altogether; a few days ago a stray cat came into the atrium and if I hadn’t called him off it would not have been pretty.  But one step at a time; at least he leaves the resident cats alone.  He is now down to 50 mg of trazodone per day, in a single dose at bedtime; that’s a lot lower than what he was on when he arrived in late November, but it’s still quite high considering he’s on a typical human dose despite having only about a quarter of a typical human body mass.  Even so, I’m going to keep weaning him off of it slowly; since I stopped splitting the dose between afternoon and bedtime I’ve noticed he’s a bit more antsy in the afternoons, so just cutting him off would still be a bad idea.  His next reduction will be this coming Sunday, down to 25 mg, so we’ll see how that works out and proceed accordingly.

In chick news, I typically keep them inside for three weeks, so they should’ve gone out into the henhouse nursery on Sunday.  However, the turkey chick is two weeks younger than the others, and the predicted low on Sunday night was -4o C, so I held off on putting them outside until today (it was only a one-night cold snap).  So watch next week for a video of them in the newly-rebuilt nursery, where they’ll spend the next three weeks before I start letting them out in the daytime to mix with the adult hens.

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Throwback Thursday Bites

Posted in Biography, History, Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, Words, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 26, 2026| Leave a Comment »

There really isn’t an excuse for repeated attempts at social engineering that aren’t even tied to some kind of grift, pork, or fascist collaboration.
–  “In the Dark”

Being able to look out a window and see grass and trees and animals…is so much better for my mental and spiritual health then being subjected to a “view” which consists of nothing but concrete, glass, and automobiles.
–  “Diary #664”

“Innocence” is merely a fanciful euphemism for “ignorance”.  –  “Tweetenstein”

For me, no sorrow is ever experienced in isolation; new tears falling into the pool immediately cause it to overflow, and then it’s impossible to tell how much of my anguish is due to the proximate source of the grief, and how much is old pain which has never been fully resolved.  –  “Pool of Tears“

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