Chickens On Ice

 I'm happy to report I'm feeling much better tonight.  Not great by any means but I think the leak has sealed up and I am mostly headache free.  I've even been able to bathe and walk outside briefly!  I think I came very close to Dr. Nabors making me come back to UAB for a blood patch but thankfully, if this continues, I won't have to. It's kinda odd to me that I was SO sick from that because the spinal tap itself was one of the easiest things I've ever been through.  Honestly, I did not even know when he had put the needle in my spine.  Of course he had numbed my spine a little in that spot and I felt him touch my back but I was just sitting there chatting away when he said, 'OK, not much longer, I've almost got enough fluid'...  Wha???  I never felt the needle go in or anything.  Ha! I guess I paid for that later.  I bleed very easy though and I think the puncture just would not clot up.  When I had that tooth pulled a year or so ago I wasn't sure that thing was ever going to stop bleeding!  But anyway, I hope it's over now.  He did the spinal tap to test for a few kinds of meningitis (I didn't know there was more than 1 kind!) and for MS.  A couple of the first tests came back quickly and my white blood cell count is up just a little, but that's all I know for now.

So...in the meantime....you all know what that means!!!  Yes!!  More chicken pictures!!!  This time it's chickens in the snow.  This all occurred in the week before I had the spinal tap.  We survived the Snowpocolypse just fine, having only received about 1 1/2 inches.  The chickens were not very happy about the whole ordeal though and would not come out of the coop.  Zuzu did come out when I tempted her with scratch, because she is so greedy or tough, I'm not sure which.  I have to give her credit though, she was about the only one even willing to come out and scratch around for the first 2 days.

 Even the Easter Eggers, which are supposed to be a cold weather breed, said the heck with that!  They would not come out at all!  Maybe that's how they survive well in cold weather....they won't go out in it!!

 Poor little PeePee looked so miserable.  I know she was dreaming of warm summer days and green grass.  I let her sit in my lap several times so she could warm her little feets up.  She really liked that.

It was not a very heavy snow, even by our southern standards, but it was pretty.

The garden is snugly tucked away in it's slumber.  There are no greens of any kind left for the chickens now, even the cabbage I had stored in the pump house for them has been eaten up.  I pulled up the brussel sprouts for them and they scarfed those down in no time also. 

After about 2 days they finally relinquished and came out into the yard and into the snow.  If you look closely you can see they are doing their flamingo impersonations.  I guess it let them warm one foot at a time.

Or, they found anything to stand on besides snow while they scrounged around for eats.  Don't worry, we threw them scratch and they always have layer rations in their house and they get any scraps from the kitchen that we think they might like.

I can't remember what day but sometime during this we also set a record low around here of -2 F. (-19 C.) Alabama record books say we have gotten much colder than that in the distant past but I have never seen minus temps in my life here.  We have a little heater in the chicken coop so everybody made it through fine but I think everybody is ready for spring.  I know I am!