Yesterday, I was trying to see if we had even one fish left in our poor little pond, which has dropped four or five feet due to the drought.  When I pulled the trap in, there was an enormous frog, tons of tadpoles, and a stick that was about 15 inches long.  Then the "stick"--a small moccasin--got me in the leg.  I have a bruise half the size of a football, and not even morphine helped with the pain.  Next snake I see in my pond will see the end of my old .22.

Our pond is drying up, the grass is all brown and yellow, and the dust is horrible.  Last year we get Hurricane Ike, this year we are baking with no rain.

Our pond has dropped between 2-3 feet, and it was only 5 or 6 feet deep to begin with.  So we are running a hose down to the pond to add water to it.  There are eight baby painted turtles in the pond, catfish, snails, bluegills, minnows, tadpoles, and many frogs.  If the pond dries up, where will they go?  Everyone else's ponds are drying up too.

Ronald and I recently decided to sell our emus.  They are lovely creatures, but we just don't have the space for them to breed and every time they have gotten loose with the horses, Ebony tries to run them down, or the big dogs jump the fence and chase them.

They are too pretty to put in the freezer, so we decided to just about give them away--only $50 each, but the buyer has to buy all six birds.  The buyer also has to find a way to transport the birds, but we could do that as well, for a small fee (not even enough to cover gas, we just want a partial reimbursement for transport).  Mostly, we want the birds to have a good home.  We figure that anyone who actually is willing to spend money on the birds will try to take good care of them, sort of the same idea that goes into charging for puppies and kittens at shelters.

We are even giving who ever buys them a book we bought, The Emu Farmer's Handbook.  The cover price on the book is $21, but we want the new owners to treat the birds well, so we are giving it to them for free.

Once they are gone, I will miss them.  Not that they were pets--far from it.  These birds were raised like livestock, mostly because I didn't want them to fall prey to dogs.  Pet birds tend to lose a lot of their fear of everything, including dogs.  So we raised the birds with a hands-off approach, so they would respond to us calling them in for food--but stay away from the yard and the dogs. 

Once they are gone, the white Chinese geese will have their old pen, and goslings should be around pretty quick after that.  Still, I will miss the silly jumping and running of the emus, miss their gorgeous eyes and eye lashes, and their beautiful plumage.