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January 19, 2005
The Fred Report, 1/19/05
Fred is hanging in there, through this bitter cold. Each morning I worry about whether he made it through the night, and each day I find, to my relief, that he did. Our barn is good refuge for him. It has been built/remodeled/rebuilt in stages: carpenters working on it tell us that the flooring is from the very early nineteenth century, whereas the superstructure is late nineteenth century, the roof (which now leans and tilts at crazy angles) early twentieth. Overall now it's simply a wreck waiting to collapse, but every few years we have carpenters check it, and they tell us it's actually still sound, despite its disreputable appearance. Our place was a chicken farm a century ago and a sheep farm as recently as three decades ago.
All of this means that the barn--the last remaining farm structure on the property (until I build my chicken coop next year!)--has been used for a variety of purposes over the years. In the Howard tenure, it's been used to dump and store all sorts of things. So there are plenty of hiding places for Fred. His favorite is in a little loft-like structure in the garage portion of the barn. He's safe there, out of reach, but he can keep his eye on everything. Up in that loft are a bunch of old produce crates that we have no use for but can't part with. So yesterday we put some bedding in one of those crates, hoping that will provide a bit of insulation for him on these cold nights.
This morning at 6:30 he alerted us that he'd made it through the night very nicely, thank you: he was energetically defending our back porch from one of the local marauders who thinks that a steady supply of outdoor cat food is a fine thing. The back porch is right under our bedroom window. So Fred eased my mind and also served as free alarm clock today.
Posted by senioritis at January 19, 2005 09:18 AM
Comments
wish we could see a picture of freddy boy
Posted by: aerobil at January 19, 2005 07:11 PM
I was thinking the same thing today. Once it warms up just a trifle, I'll take the camera out there and snap a pic of this handsome man about town as he surveys the garage from his lofty bed.
Posted by: senioritis at January 19, 2005 07:53 PM