Mis-Adventures of the Year

Ok, so I sometimes like to think and pretend that weird wacky things just don't happen to me. Well that of course is not reality and weird and wacky things DO happen to me. What follows is a short list of the mis-adventures from the past year that make me smile now...now that I am well past them.

Transporting rabbit on bike.

Simple right? Put rabbit cage on back of bike pedal bike home. Well it would've gone just like the except for the fact that while biking from the ferry terminal along my chosen route there is this thing in the way. It's actually called a bollard but why it is where it is makes me call it a thing. I believe it's intended use is to stop cars and trucks from crossing a pedestrian bridge that likely can't take that kind of loading. Well this bollard is on the opposite side of the bridge where pedestrian and bike traffic comes from and the direction the cars come from is completely open. Anyway this thing makes you slow down and thread your bike through it usually leaving about 6-8 inches on either side of the bike and panniers. Or so. Well with a rabbit cage mounted on back of bike there is actually negative space available, so that when traveling along and trying to thread bike + rabbit cage it doesn't fit. I, blissfully unaware, thinking about the great rabbit from Abundant Acres Farm that is going to fit right into my rabbitry, am not thinking about any of this bollard/trail blocking thing up ahead. Of course I did think about it maybe a nanosecond before I tried...
attempted to thread bike+rabbit cage through the gauntlet. And yes you guessed it, it didn't fit and I and my bike went from moving object to wedge in an instance. Thankfully, Mr Rabbit, now know as Flash, was fine. Cage on the other hand...a bit bent. Me, ok to, just a bit embarrassed.

Processing rabbits in the dark.

Another rabbit story. This time just a dumb mistake. Yes, the last one too was a dumb mistake. But this one was just a dumb planning ahead mistake. And this one should fall in the Lessons to Live By category. Here is the lesson learned and the rule derived from it: If I am going to work, on anything, in the dark I will need light. As the title says, I was trying to process rabbits in the Fall thinking it was still Summer. That small miscalculation left me in a near blind situation. Lauren and Garth came to my rescue and let me borrow a headlamp to finish the job.

Bees at night.

Bees sleep at night right? Well I was sort of thinking along this lines several month ago while refilling the sugar water feeders for my bees. My logic led me down a shady path, tested only by my own anecdotal evidence, which was slim, very slim. I had developed a routine. Wait until dark then go out to beehive, open top, remove empty sugar water feeders and replace with full feeders. This Fall I upgraded to larger feeders to minimize the number of times I would need to complete this task so each time was a bit different. Well this time wasn't good. I was coming back from closing chickens up and peeked inside the hive and noticed that there were a bunch of bees up top and the feeders were empty. I grabbed the feeders and had to shake off some bees. I walked back to the house to refill the feeders thinking and wondering why so many bees were up so late. Minutes later I walked back to the hive, sans bee suit mind you, with full feeders ready to feed my hungry bees. Now you may be thinking why do you feed your bees sugar water? Well that is a very good question I want to get into that, but will save that for a future post because it is important. Before I get too distracted...I walked up to my hive and popped open the top and to my surprise there was now a party going on in the top super of my bee hive and it was turning into one of those bad high school parties where too many people show up and there's way too much alcohol. So in a panic, I quickly placed the feeders in the top super, squishing several bees (sorry bees!) and was throwing down the top when one mad as hell bee made for my face. I jumped away from the hive, barely managing to get the lid on and not knock over the whole hive in the process. The pissed off bee was in my face, in my ear, in my hair...it seemed as if it was ten bees! I freaked out, running through the garden, flailing my arms, ripping my shirt off, throwing my headlamp, tripping, stumbling, and falling to the ground. And the bee was still there! I ran! I ran for the garage, a refuge with a door thinking I could just shut the door and would be safe. Inside the garage it was still there! The buzzing! Mad as hell! Seconds later in just my boxers, my heart racing, and ears pounding with each heart beat. I didn't hear the bee. As I regained my composure, and blood pressure, I got dressed. I was about to put my shirt back on before I stopped and decided to turn this article of clothing inside out as I had done to the others, just to be sure it was there. But it was. The mad as hell bee had stung my shirt and was stuck via stinger to my shirt. Now why did I react this way? What's a bee sting anyway? It hurts a little but it goes away. No idea, it just happened this way. This spring, if I decide to feed sugar water to my bees, I will suit up. Lesson learned.