Wild Weather, Soaked Chicks, Non Compliant Electronics

Tried but couldn't post this due to weather last night.

Wild, wild weather this evening, and some time after recording the excitement I remembered that the roof of the new chick pen was not secured. (I'm trying to figure out how to add the recording but I keep getting error messages, which is to be expected since they are the most common messages I get from any electronic device.) So, I had to wait a few minutes before I could go out, and sure enough, the roof was about 15 feet away from the pen, the chicks were piled in a corner, soaked through, scared to death, and getting chilled.

Nothing quite like trying to set up an electric heat lamp while standing in the rain, or getting down on all fours and crawling into a poopy chick pen to put down a mat of dry hay, or banging, scraping out, and replacing wet chick feed, and wiring on a roof, all in between severe thunderstorms. 

(Full disclosure: it was actually kinda fun if I didn't think about it too much. :)

Lil and I got to hang out with Bella and the goats under the barn for awhile when it was just too crazy to make progress, or when I felt too much like a human lightning rod. Although in truth, when the hail started and the winds picked up and I wondered why they couldn't have put a tornado siren a little closer to my house so I could actually hear it, I was thinking that under the barn was not where I really wanted to be. I would have preferred someplace safe, like the Middle East, or even better--the house. Even a box turtle was trying to get away from the weather at that point.

As you can see, by the time I finished the chicks were recovering and content, and the roof wired in place, and obviously I was not struck by lightning although I got a good picture of a strike that I also can't seem to clip from the video. (Electronic equipment senses that I am a Luddite at heart and expresses its disapproval in the form of obstinance more often than not. It's not the operator. Really. Ask my kids. We go to check out at a store and the register goes offline. They shoot me the look which says: "Duh Mom, you're way too close to the register!" I step back and everything returns to normal. Weird but true. End of rabbit trail.)

At 3AM when it got crazy again I spent the next 45 minutes watching their heat lamp, like the beacon of a little lighthouse, and wondering at what point it would flip and fly away. Thankfully, it stuck to the ground and kept on shining. Today I shall anchor it. In between thunderstorms, of course.