Today is my wedding anniversary. Since my wife and I are both busy tonight, I decided to take her to dinner last night, but not before doing a few romantic things first.

Before the dinner:

• Gathered eggs - two! From, I suspect, the Comets. The Australorp took the day off. But she worked Monday and the Comets didn't.
  
  
• Found the place in the coop where the predator - now I suspect a raccoon - got in, then cut a piece of rabbit fence and tacked up to prevent future entries.
  
  
• Got the two kid does and fed them in the tack room because my daughter forgot as she was having a girl party. We've been feeding the two kids separately because we're not sure they're getting enough milk from their mother.
  
  
• Fed Ripley, gave her her evening pill, took her with me to the barn to do chores, fussed over her, hooked her back up.

And then after the dinner:

• Went to a romantic grocery store, where I bought, among other things, three small tins of cat food.
  
  
• Got the live trap down from the tack room, baited it with one of the tins of cat food, put it in the room the predator used to gain access to the coop.
  
  
• Caught the barn cat and put her in the kennel because I didn't want her to get caught in the trap.
  
  
• Let the kids out of the tack room because my daughter forgot to let them out because of the girl party.
  
  
• Went to lock up the birds to find only one in the coop. Chased the other six out of the goat stall and into the coop using a broom and Ripley. It wasn't funny at the time because I was sweating buckets because of the sticky heat.
  
  
• Fussed over Ripley and hooked her back up.
  
  
• Took a shower, put astringent and antibacterial ointment on my cat scratches (barn cat was not happy about the whole kennel thing).

Like I said, romantic. After giving my wife her Anniversary card this morning, I went out for chores. No predator in the trap - it had taken the tin of cat food, though. This was my bad because I'd had problems setting the trap last night. It's kind of a good news/bad news thing: Bad news - no predator. Good news - predator does not fear trap, will be back and when it does the trap will be properly set. Bad news - no way I'm ever going to catch the barn cat again, and it may get caught going after the cat food. Good news - after releasing the cat from the predator trap, it will never be tempted to go back in again, in which case I'll snag the predator.

I also wore my .22 pistol out this morning in case there was a predator. I was a real gun-totin' maniac. A romantic gun-totin' maniac.

___

*I've been listening to a lot of Sufjan Stevens of late and apparently have picked up his penchant for long titles.