It's been a full month since I've returned to this side of the Pacific. I miss the abundance of street food and the generally festive atmosphere in Taiwan, but it's also somewhat relaxing to be living in the American suburbs. Work is only 8 miles away from home, and I carpool with coworkers every day, so it looks like I've escaped the normal symptoms of urban sprawl.
Photos of the latest "family reunion" in San Francisco can be found here, although I won't point any out in particular. It's not that San Francisco isn't interesting - but it's an hour's train ride away, and I've yet to catch it on a perfectly sunny and photo-worthy day. So here are some pictures of my recent visit to the "ranch" in Dallas - 6 new hens and a new baby goat.
As the story goes, no one was even aware of her mother's pregnancy until she was already running around the lawn. We thought all three adult goats were siblings... but then again, they're just goats.
The chickens are perfectly capable of sharing the grazing grounds with the goats. It was not always so - a lone rooster annoyed the goats enough that they prefer to avoid his presence, but since he became our dinner, there's been nothing but peace.
They all live a rather care-free life. The chickens spend the day pecking at gravel and insects between their meals of corn, and the goats graze at the lawn and occasionally climb a fence to eat some leaves.
As long as they continue to churn out a half dozen eggs a day, they're at no risk of suffering the same fate as their useless male companion. The fridge is already packed with perhaps one or two hundred of their eggs.
Since my last visit, the billies have each grown a tuft of a beard, and their horns have noticeably spiraled a half turn.
Once in a while, the chickens grow anxious as they sense predators nearby. Though not caught on film, one or more coyote certainly frequent the area. But their fear of humans, and perhaps of the goats, have kept the hens safe thus far.
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