Over the course of the last week, I built a new nest box for the chickens. I used three of those five-gallon buckets that things as diverse as paint, spackling compound, cake icing, donut filling, and pickles come in and built a frame to hold three side-by-side eighteen inches off the ground. I got three in black so the inside would be dark. Put on a perch so the birds could look inside. Also put on a curtain made from a plasticoid feed bag, but I draped it back when I put it in the coop so the chooks could see what it was. Put straw in the buckets, and two golf balls in each to give them the idea what the whole contraption was for.

(Perhaps I'll post some photos of the contraption when I get the chance if you promise not to laugh at my woodworking skills. My dad was the genius carpenter, but I didn't inherit much of his talent.)

I wasn't sure what the birds would think after installing it on (as I recall) Thursday night. But by Friday, they had been busy knocking out golf balls and kicking out the straw. I think I need to add a restraining panel, just in case.

Saturday, I made two interesting discoveries. First, there was an egg in one of the buckets. Hooray! Not only does this double the number of eggs I've collected thus far, it also tells me that at least one bird has figured out what the nest box bucket is for.

The second discovery was less settling. There was a rat in the coop. It didn't see me - and all I could see was the rear end and tail. It was stuck in the chicken wire I'd put up to keep varmints out. My theory is that it squeezed through to get in, gorged itself on spilled chicken feed and scratch, and when it tried to get out, it was too full and got wedged into the wire.

Ran to the house for my varmint dispatcher, my Ruger .22 pistol, came back out and capped it at point blank range. The worst part was pulling the corpse out of the wire without ripping it in half. My son, who was around at the time, thought the pistol was cool, and my daughter, who was working goats, was fascinated by seeing the dead rat. She had kept a domestic rat as a pet a few years ago (she called it Dinsdale, after a Monty Python sketch), but what impressed her with the corpus rattus was it's size. It had free run of the barn, after all, and may even be the rat that chewed its way into one of the plastic containers I was keeping chicken feed in to - oh, the irony - keep the rats out of it.

So check one egg, scratch one rat.

Meantime, Ripley the dog is showing herding instincts toward the baby goats. I go out to feed her in the morning, but she won't eat until after we've been to the barn and I've opened up the chicken coop. She also likes to herd the chickens out of the coop in the morning so she can chase them - I'm not sure about that latter behavior, but I know it's not malevolent because she play bows before running after them.

This dog's coat is really amazing and sheds dirt on its own - or the process can be hastened with a brushing. She's also quietly intelligent. Because of her size and puppy clumsiness, she might be seen as stupid, but she's already mastered commands like "sit" "come" and "mind your manners" with nothing but praise offered.

I think I could really get into owning this breed of dog. I can see why many people who own one end up getting another in spite of their grown size.