Candy’s left eye has been teary and I haven’t been able to solve the dry, irritated ear-skin problem, so I took her to the vet last night. Luckily, Dr. Mead has evening hours when it’s cooler and less stressful to transport a rabbit. I have a small dog crate that I fill with her favorite fragrant timothy hay and she travels quite nicely in it.

Although Candy likes to be pet, it is all on her terms. When she wants a head scratch, she’ll sit at the edge of her hutch near the door. If she doesn’t want to be bothered, she’ll let you know with a growl (yes, rabbits vocalize) and a scratch. Candy has never liked to be picked up. So what does a vet do when he needs to hold a rabbit still and probe around her eyelid? He puts her in a special bunny sock.

Candy was comfortable, secure, quiet and showed no signs of distress.

The diagnosis? Something has irritated her eye, and although it isn’t scratched, it still needs to have ointment applied twice a day. The ears are a bit of a mystery. You’d think that where they drag on the ground would be where the issues are, but the eczema is at the base. So, I have an emollient to apply twice a day. It combines several drugs, including an anti-fungal and an antibiotic and we’re sure to fix whatever the problem is.

So far this morning, I was able to apply both medicines without having to put Candy in a sock. Dr. Mead is an expert, but I know Candy will be annoyed with my fumbling.

Unfortunately for Hencam Candy-watchers, she has to be kept in her hutch to be kept clean (dirt sticks to the ointments.) Candy has a parrot toy in her hutch. It has blocks of wood to gnaw on and a bell at the bottom. When Candy gets annoyed or wants to be let out she rings the bell – not genteelly, but with much flinging about. I expect to hear a lot of bell ringing in the next week.

My chickens spend a lot of time scratching in dirt, which gives their feet a natural pedicure. I’ve never thought about it much, until my husband noticed how long Buffy’s toenails were. So long that they were starting to curl. Buffy, as many of you know, has a mystery ailment that has weakened her legs so that she isn’t strong enough to scratch. The hard-packed sandy, gritty dirt of the yard has not been her emory board. So, yesterday, I got out the clippers that I use on my dogs (specially made for long round nails) and I trimmed Buffy’s toenails. It doesn’t hurt at all – as long as you avoid the quick where there is blood flow (usually the quick extends about halfway down the center of the nail.) However, I can’t say that Buffy enjoyed the attention like I do when I go to the spa for a pedicure!

Buffy is now standing more comfortably. Makes me appreciate how healthy my girls’ outdoor life is. I don’t want to imagine what a hen’s foot looks like if she can’t get outside.

(I took photos of her feet, but they were too out-of-focus to share. You try getting a picture of a wiggling chicken foot in which that toenail, and not the background, is in focus! I’m sure there’s a way, but I don’t feel like practicing!)

I have a good-sized strawberry patch in front of my raspberry bushes. A native blueberry bush shades the corner of it. For more than a week there have been white fruits. I wait for them to ripen. Every morning I go out and am disappointed. What I find are empty caps. No fruits, red, white, pink or otherwise. There are no teeth marks from nibbling rabbits and no chewed leaves implicating bugs. But the berries are gone. What/who is taking my berries? Any ideas? Perhaps I have to set up a berrycam to discover the culprit?

Japanese beetles are also called June Bugs, because that is when they appear. Although I saw a few last month, yesterday was when the beetles arrived en masse. I actually saw clumps of them just minutes after they emerged from their pupae. June bugs start out as eggs, then hatch into disgusting white grubs, destroy the roots of the lawn for a year, then turn into pupae, then become the beetles that eat up my garden.

I didn’t reach for the pesticides. I had something better. The LAWN PATROL. I carried my most voracious hen, Edwina, into the yard and plopped her next to a tangle of beetles. She ate them up. I let the other hens onto the lawn. It is amazing to see a chicken spy a bug and get it. A hen can see a tiny movement and snatch up the cause before I can even register what she is looking at.

There were swarms of beetles, hovering in the grass like honeybees on clover. I greatly enjoyed seeing Petunia, long neck stretched out, running after the flying bugs. Here is a photo of Twinkydink chasing June bugs:

After about an hour (and I calculate the consumption of about 1,000 beetles) the girls took a well-deserved break. A communal dirt bath revived them. Soon after this photo was taken they were up and on patrol again. Good Girls!

The best day of the year in my little town is our July 4th celebration (scheduled on a weekend that’s not the 4th.) It’s called Old Home Day and has been happening here for about a century. It starts with early morning road races and ends with a chicken BBQ served by the firemen in the fire station. In between there’s a parade – no politicians allowed – but children  on bicycles are encouraged. Eleanor and Edwina had their own float! We put them in a wire dog crate, bungee-corded that to a kid’s wagon, and rolled them down the street. People LOVE seeing chickens. The girls were right behind an alpaca and a couple of mini-horses, but the oohs and ahhs for the chickens were the loudest.

There’s an art show, a dunking booth and a frog jumping contest. There’s a cake decorating contest. I entered this:

The nest is made from shredded wheat. Many people in town knew that it was my entry. The cakes are not returned. They are used as prizes for the cakewalk (think musical chairs, but if you win, you get a cake.) In our little town of only 5,000 people, about 100 donate cakes for this. Doesn’t that just make you smile?

This year my 10-year old son entered the Soap Box Derby for the first time. He and his Dad made a cart out of wheels and things left at our “transfer station” (glorified dump.) For this event, a road is closed off and the police get out their radar gun to gauge the speed of the carts. The police love Old Home Day.

Old Home Day is one of the reasons why this town doesn’t feel like a normal suburb. It really is a small community.