My homesteading married couple have moved. At last!
With them go their company Window to the Wild and their nine birds.
Their physical location is no longer in a neighborhood, well, not a neighborhood in the usual sense of the word.
They’ve moved their dwelling to a wildlife rehabilitation centre and share their acreage with an emu, hawks, owls, vultures, turkeys, peacocks, pheasants, a llama and much, much more!
We helped them clear their yard in the human-hood on the final day of 2014, just over a week ago.
We contributed 5 additional man hours to the morning and managed to get the job done before they had to rush off to work. The following dawn Lindsey was dashing off to Houston to train lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) at a private zoo, not to dance or jump through hoops mind you but to give paws for mani-pedis and rumps for shots.
McNenys simply don’t do things by halves!
“I never realized trees would grow around plastic ties and nails,” she said from her perch high up on the 8 foot fence encircling their aviary as she did war with the yards and yards of well attached netting completely covering their flight training ground.
We used our skills, learned from many strikes over at the local theatre where we volunteered as a family for years, to dismantle enclosures and runs, coops and perches.
We carted meters of wood to stack along the perimeter of the fence along their alley…
Almost immediately, as if we’d sent out a notification on Facebook, gold diggers began arriving to sift through our rubbish.
Will you look at all that fire wood!
Simon, once-a-herpetologist-always-a-herpetologist, rescued two earth snakes,
before they were brutally mashed by a shovel-wielding hubs, and removed them to a safer location in a flowerbed.
I salvaged some vigorously growing wild mint pulling up several bunches to augment my kitchen herbs. Most of it has taken root and livens up my daily salads.
By one we had returned home to continue our quiet Wednesday a little bruised, a little achey, and plenty cold.
The year had remained eventful to the very end.
To ring in the New Year I encouraged hubs to lend a hand or two in the moving of odds and ends to complete the clear out of the rental.
Father and son bonded over a pick-up truck and lugged the chicken coop and other rogue items that had dug in their heels, to the new abode clear on the other side of town.
Remember outdoorsy son’s wifey and help-mate was off training bears.
The weather changed from a moderately cold coat-wearing-Texas-winter trend (since the weeks before Thanksgiving) to a beastly cold long-johns-and-everything-you-own-wearing trend, in a matter of hours.
Several mornings of frozen pipes welcomed my son to their new house and when Lindsey returned from her hiatus at the zoo she awoke to several waterless mornings.
Happily my son is so practical he hurdled this first test of home ownership calmly only to find a more pressing one hovering over their dependents.
What to do with a trailer full of birds and a coop with four chickens when the temperature plummets to 17 below?
They had heaters and heat lamps but the insulation in the metal enclosure was nil to nothing and the electrically generated warmth was fleeing through the walls and ceiling without benefitting the feathered inhabitants.
The birds were cold I was informed over text,
“40 degrees is not acceptable for tropical macaws…” no it isn’t! Nor is it acceptable for tropical Mums for that matter!
“Knit them a few sweaters,” I text-ested and snuggled deeper into my cardigan.
“I’m wrapping the trailer…” wrote my hardy son.
I had visions of him draping and tying blankets and woolly jumpers down over the 20 foot trailer.
A few hours later he texted to say it was a wrap…he’d found mammoth plastic banners on the facility, and covered the end where the birds were living and the chicken coop in the foreground,
“It’s now a toasty 80 degrees in there…” he thumbed.
Hubs handed me a hot chocolate to stop me from high tailing it over there to join my feathered friends!
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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