Sims Sunday: Postponed Due To Chicken-Related Activities

I’ve spent the last two days finishing off the chicken tractor. On Friday my dad happened to be in Seattle for a visit, so I shanghaied him into driving the extra 3 hours round trip to give me a hand. I couldn’t have finished the coop without his help. Big round of applause, everyone!

Here it is from the rear.

There’s a hatch in the floor of the roof coop, so that they can move back and forth between it and the run below. The idea is that they go upstairs every night to roost. I then close and lock the hatch, to keep them safe.

Here’s a poor picture of the front. This was the best angle I was able to get.

To open and close the hatch, you open that front door and reach in. This isn’t the best long-term solution, but it works for now. Other long-term plans include cutting doors on the sides so that I can reach every corner, covering the angled sides with some kind of roofing material, and staining the gable ends so that they don’t get wet.

There are a lot of tasks on the long-term list. Let us set those thoughts aside for now. Here, want a peek inside?

That’s their perch on the right, and the hatch on the left.

Be glad that this picture was taken before their first night up there. When I opened the door and saw all the chicken crap, all over the beautiful lovely coop that I had built by hand, with my own designs and sweat and some of my own money and some money I had to borrow… I was sad.

I fully planned to wake up Sunday morning and shuffle over to the computer and play Sims 2 for several hours, like usual. But I went outside with my coffee to let the chickens out of their newly-completed roof coop, and puttered around a bit, and the next thing you know I’m rolling up my area rug and dragging it out onto the lawn and washing it with a bottle of shampoo, a garden hose, and a scrub brush.

You know how these things can be. Once you make a clean spot, you can’t really stop, the little voice in your head keeps pick pick picking away. I’m forcing myself to sit down and write up a blog post, even though now that I have rolled up the carpet and swept up all the chicken litter, it still needs to be mopped.

It’s there right now, behind me, un-mopped. Okay, I can’t take it anymore – must run!

(One final note – many people asked if Dolly is blue. This is a tricky question. I suspect that those of you who see a blue chicken in this picture are using CRT computer monitors. She looks fine on my LCD monitor.

However, at this point we must define “blue.” Dolly has a teal cast to her feathers, depending on the angle of the light. She’s kind of the same color as a mallard’s butt, or a black pigeon.

The picture definitely showed a bluish cast, because of the late afternoon sunlight. Is she blue like the sky, or a Pepsi can, or Grover? No. Is she blue like a puddle on black asphalt with a slight gasoline sheen? Yes. Is that “blue”? Um… PASS!)