Spring Cleaning The Barn at The Mace Place

Luckily the vet comes twice a year to preg check our cattle, otherwise the barn would probably never get cleaned.  Sunday was the perfect day for cleaning out the barn.

All the old hay that had blown into the barn was raked up and hauled off; the concrete got a good cleaning and while we were cleaning everything up I mentioned to the Copenhagen Cowboy that we should hang the barn lights that have been sitting on the side of the barn for over 2 years now. (You know, the ones he just HAD to have!)

I am operating the skid steer, he is in the bucket.  This makes me a nervous wreck because I can never remember "is in down and out up? or is it out down and in up?"  So while he is sitting in the bucket of the skid steer I am messing with the controls to figure out what tilts the bucket up and down and what lifts the bucket up?  (He gets frustrated with me easily, but I don't want to drop him for heavens sake.)

We get the first light hung with no problems and move on to the second one.  In the exact spot where he wants to put the light is a bird nest.  I told him to make sure there were no eggs in the nest.  If there were we could wait to install the light.  He yells down "No eggs!" and proceeds to dig the nest out and drop it to the barn floor.  I watch in horror as I see a baby bird wiggling and squirming with it's mouth open.  I yell up "There were babies in that nest!"  "Well", he says "there were no eggs!"  I jump out of the skid steer to rescue the babies and lay them, along with what is left of the nest, on his work bench.   He is left in the bucket at the top of the barn.  He yells to me to come let him down.  (You have no idea how tempted I was to leave him up there for awhile, I was so devastated.)

After I finally let him come down from the ceiling of the barn I yell "Come here and look at these babies!"  I felt horrible. Now the Momma bird is going to come back and her babies are all going to be gone! "That's disgusting!" he replied and told me to throw them in the trash.  "They are still alive!"  I gently carry the nest with the tiny, brand new baby birds, back to the spot where he dropped them and place them, nest and all, back into a feed bucket right below where they were.  If the momma bird comes back maybe she'll see the nest laying there in the feed bucket and rescue them.  Well, that is if the cats don't find them first.