When I lived in Florida, I thought I knew heat. It was humid day and night; stepping outside meant I was going to sweat. It was part of life and I had a change of clothes with me all of the time.
I continue to be fooled by Missouri. I thought that moving several states north meant cooler weather and sometimes, there’s intermittent ice and snow in winter, mixed with days in 60s and 70s. But the heat?
In South Florida, The Heat was a basketball team as in the Miami Heat. Here, it’s an oppressive and dense air that wraps around you as soon as you step outside, at least it is in August.
While Florida is below The South and is a peninsula that dips into and is cooled by the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, Missouri is landlocked. It has wonderful streams, lakes and creeks, but not enough water to offer relief when you’re not right in it.
This past week, we consistently hit the high nineties to over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. I found out that I am not an indoors all day kind of girl. I also drink A LOT of water in the heat.
New wrinkle, I have chickens. The only one that was laying eggs previously, has paused and since they were adopted as adults, I won’t be eating them. As I stressed about how to keep them alive in the extreme heat, I also saw the irony of reading articles on-line while eating a chicken dinner.
So, I observed some unhealthy signs: raspy breathing, beaks open with labored breathing and I needed to do something. I learned that a wading pool is good, but not to make the water so deep that they get their feathers soaked.
The indented area of a large, plastic tote lid worked out well, holding about ½ an inch to an inch of water. I added ice to their water bowl (which melted pretty quickly), put a long extension cord across the yard to a fan pointed at their run/coop area and gave them a small, frozen water bottle each morning in case any of them wanted to lay on it or near it.
One evening, later and darker than I realized, I went to close up the coop. I always count my chickens (I know). It was hard to see. I shut it and then felt bad. If one was one in the run under the little bushes in there, they and the others would stress that it was shut out. So I peeked from the nesting box side and counted their shadows, all in, but I also saw an S shaped shadow under them.
I ran to the house for a light, came back and found a 3-4 foot-ish, black snake hanging out with them in the coop. I knew it wasn’t venomous since it’s head matched the size of the body and it was all black, but it was up close to me as I was crouched in the fenced in run, observing it. I banged from underneath on the coop floor, from outside of the coop, with a long stick. No dice. I said a prayer and left the coop open for the night and in the morning, the birds were fine and the snake was gone.
I shared my snake story and found out that many people in this town have chicken and snake stories. My guess is that since there weren’t any eggs to eat, the snake came into the run for all of the extra water and shade. and once there, followed the chickens up the coop when they went in at nightfall.
As I write this we are having our first cool day, back in the eighties. I took the tarp and fan in before we had rain. The farmers must be so relieved, for the moment. I am looking forward to catching up on the lawn and garden.