Animal Noises

I woke up this morning and suddenly realized that I can actually sleep well in the morning!!!!!!!!! Some of you are probably thinking, "What is she talking about?" James knows all about it and has been on the receiving end of complaint after complaint after complaint! The sun pours through my window and onto my bed, my cat Katie sleeps curled up near my feet soaking up the rays, "LITTLE" birds chirp happily in the trees outside my window, and my kids (who also sleep better in the A.M. hours) snooze pretty late into the morning.
How is it that I didn't notice this until now? I mean, we have been out of the camper for 3 months, and into a regular house! I guess I was just so exhausted that I didn't even notice the change! This morning though, I noticed how relaxing it was to just lay in bed and drift in and out of half-slumber, even dreaming pleasant, little, short dreams. It was heaven! You guys are still probably wondering what on earth I am talking about!!!
Well, for a year and a half, the kids and I lived in our camper on my mom and dad's property. We were there trying to help them start an organic, cattle raising type thing........it turned out being cattle, goats, sheep....then soon after, chickens, gardening and then pigs, too. I don't even want to know, what else they will add to the "Funny-Farm" in the months to come.........my mom even tried to get my dad to let her raise llamas, after she saw some at our fair, last year. Oh, I hope she never reads this.....she doesn't know we call it the "Funny-Farm", so no one tell her!...
Anyway, so here I am with a brand new baby, in the camper. He doesn't sleep through the night very well, as most new babies. And at around 4:30, or as soon as the sun is starting to come up, this dumb rooster of my mom's perches himself on the slide-out bar on my camper (my bed IS the slide-out, and so the rooster is directly under my bed)!!! He crows more than just once......like about 10-15 times at regular intervals......and he did it pretty much every morning! He is not the only one making annoying noises.........his little pack of hens perch on there, as well, and do their stupid morning hollering, to let you know that they have laid an egg! Have any of you ever heard what that sounds like??? Oh, I just want to write a cuss word here, just thinking about those mornings! I hated it and there was nothing I could about it. I told my mom about it and she would just laugh and say it doesn't bother her.
So, we have roosters cock-a-doodle-dooing, and hens (I don't even know what you could call their hollaring...Jori Butler, or Kirstin Johnson....maybe you can fill people in on what that sounds like...or a good word to describe it). So now, we will move on to the other five animal noises that did not occur every morning, but at least a few times a week.
Cows...cows moo and holler for one reason only, (unless they are hungry)....and that is if their baby is outside the fence, or if they can't find their baby. And when they are on open range they lose their babies quite often...sometimes their babies can be acres away. So, just imagine "Valley" mooing.......i don't even think mooing is a strong enough word for it, and I have already used hollering.......if someone can give me a good word, I will enter it in here! I am not the best blogger in the world.......so, anyway, back to "Valley" mooing....have you ever yelled across a valley?....what happens? It echoes. Yes, so every week or so, early in the morning are two echoing, mooing noises, going back and forth. It usually doesn't last long, and actually I could probably handle the cow noises better than the chickens and animal next on the list....I am going to group these two together because even though they are different, it is still a similar noise. Goats and Sheep. My mom's goats and sheep would come up from the barn just about every morning. They would come up looking to eat any hay the horses left behind, or get into any hay that was under the tarp that they could get to, or they would scout the yard for any thrown out carrots or kitchen scrap that looked yummy....sometimes if they pushed on my mom's mudroom door hard enough or just the right way, it would open and "viola"....all kinds of yummy stuff in there........cat food, dog food, occasional chicken feed, or whole corn, or whatever my mom kept in there. And then, sometimes in the spring, and summer my mom leaves the windows open in that room, and one window doesn't have a screen. So, if they couldn't open the door, sometimes the kids would jump up on the patio furniture and try to jump into the window....I don't think they ever succeeded in making it into the window, but they made quite a racket trying to do this, and other things. If any of you have goats, you know that if they find a way to get somewhere and that somewhere poses even a smidgen of the possibility of possibly getting food, they will try every day to go there and do it. What time do they choose to do this? Early in the morning....some of you are saying, "Why are they not penned up?" Well, in the spring, summer, and fall they are on range, too. Mom and Dad have tried to fence them away from the house, but nothing ever works...and it is the "Funny-Farm", so what can I say? Anyhow....goats also know that if they cannot succeed in doing what they came to do, that if they make a lot of noise, baaing, and maaing, that their mother (my mom) will come out and chase them off, or whatever she does....IF she hears the commotion. Also, when goats lose their babies it is much like the cow noises. Mom has like over 40 goats, so just imagine the noises that they make! Ugh...i can just remember my frustration all those morning, and being so tired, from it all.
Another on the list is their dogs....most of you have dogs, but I am sure a lot of you don't let them bark. I think my parents just sleep through it sometimes. They don't always bark in the morning....they bark in the night at coyotes, which isn't a bad thing, but one of my mom's dogs...a little black Dachshund/ Chihuahua cross would bark at every little thing in the morning, and keep barking and barking....
And then my brother has this cat, that would try to come through my cat door, every morning. Well, Katie knew about what time he would come, so she would sit near the opening, but where Tom couldn't see her. And as soon as he was halfway in she would tear the daylights out of him. Now, just imagine this happening to a cat that is halfway through the cat door....Yeah, it made a huge racket. This started happening when Sheldon was about 6 months or so, and it would wake him up early in the morning, every time the cats would do this, so it was just so annoying.
As far as the rooster goes, he eventually died before fall of 2007....I don't really remember when it was...and I promise I did not kill him. He died of natural causes, though I WANTED to kill him! I will NEVER have a rooster...ever.
Occasionally, one or more of these animals would make their noise on the same morning, but it was more like a different animal, every morning. Except with the rooster....that was every morning until he died. I can honestly say that I can only think of a handful of times that no animal made a noise that awakened me! And I can honestly say, that most of those mornings were when James was home, so I don't think he really believes all this to be true or if I am just exaggerating! Well, I am not!
Anyway, I just want to thank God that I am not living there anymore and do not have to deal with those hassles any longer. The Bible has some passage or another for most things that you can imagine and here is one that goes really well with this situation!.........Laugh if you want........it is straight out of the Bible, y'all! Proverbs 27:14 "If a man loudly blesses his neighbor in the morning, it will be taken as a curse." That is NIV, but it reads pretty much the same in the other versions! Well, apply that to animals, and there you go! Or apply it to yourself and don't do this, to your neighbor! Especially a new mom! :) I don't know who would, but you never know!
Well, I have rambled on and on and now I am really tired. I am so thankful for my quiet mornings! By the way, I do LOVE chickens! Just not roosters! Rachelle