Day 9

Last night I forgot to mention that Will pulled me aside after dinner to talk about something important.  Now I know that you haven't been too fond of collecting eggs, but what we are going to do tomorrow is a whole lot more...involved.  I am going to need you to catch chickens with a net, to be sent off to the butcher.  How many? Oh I don't know 100 or so... As soon as he responded it was as if I was in a movie and all of the other noises in world muted to a silence, and all I could hear were the cracking of my morals like twigs in the forrest.  After what seemed like minutes of my life slashing before my eyes, i heard Max ...Max hello are you alright?  Yea, yea I am fine.  Well do you want to participate, because it would be a tremendous help if you could. ...Yea sure I am up for doing anything.  So I woke up at 630.  That was pretty early for me, considering I had been slowly but surely making progress on waking up closer to 7 the past week.  So we got out of the house at 7, and after I fed the dogs, and the pigs, it was time to catch some chickens...meh.  Steve and I were handed our nest by Will, and I was supposed to follow Steve's lead.  Steve is an extremely nice guy, who works at the farm, but sometimes he is very forceful with the animals.  Which for this particular job, was actually beneficial.  So we started by rounding up a large group of chickens; by using our nets we could make our wingspan infinitely times bigger, so that the chickens wouldn't try to escape, because they were scared.  So we tried to corner them, and we only ended up cornering about 5 chickens on our first go, and so I kind of just put my net out and one ran right into it.  It felt so strange capturing a chicken in a net and having it try to escape.  It was like I wanted to be on the same team as the chickens, but to my coach these were the finals of a huge tournament.  I hate to say this next part, but its true.  After awhile it kind of became like a game.  It was sort of thrilling catching the chickens.  As bad as I felt, taking a day off from doing all the stupid morning rounds ( which I later found out I had to complete after I finished with the chickens ) was a change of pace.  It might of struck some athletic crave that I had been searching for, or maybe it was the fact that Will was telling me how much of a good job i was doing.  I don't know.  It was strange and I sell feel bad for what I did, but it definitely happened.  And boy, when I left Los Angeles I had no idea what kind of experiences I was in for.  So after the thrilling morning, I finished all the rounds and began to wash the eggs from the morning.  As I was washing, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye.  I made out a spider, about the size of a small biscuit, crawling on the sink.  Now, I don't know if many of you know this but I am very afraid of spiders, and critters all together I guess.  This spider was enormous, and I had never seen one this big, not inside a cage.  So i tried to ignore it, I thought maybe it would just crawl off the sink and I would let it live to see another day. wrong.  It started crawling closer, and it fell into one of the sinks.  I took action when I saw the time fit.  He was in the sink, and I took the water hose from the sink and sprayed the spider like I was possessed by some mad man.  I sprayed him for a good give minutes until he wasn't moving anymore.  So i went back to work, scrubbing my eggs, when I saw the spider come back from the dead and started to crawl out of the sink.  this time I used heavier reinforcements.  I took the dish soap and sprayed him with it until he couldn't move, and then sprayed him with the water hose again.  Hopefully that will do the trick.  I went back to cleaning again, but cautiously.  After ten minutes of finally relaxing, and singing to who knows what song on KIIS xm, I kind of forgot about the critter.  Until it started to climb out again!  This was the third time!  Literally, all of the hairs on my body stood straight up, and it felt as if spiders were crawling all over me, because of all the hair movement.  I finally decided to take matters into my own hands ( literally ) and smash it with a paper towel.  Finally, the stupid bug stopped moving for good.  I didn't want to have to kill it, but it was scaring the heebee jeebees out of me.  So after that, I finished the eggs, and had to help Steve move a large Pig Feeder that I painted all last week into a pig paddock.  This took a lot of effort, and analyzing, and moving, all in the blistering humidity of Maryland.  Disgusting.  If there is one thing I hate most about the east coast its the humidity of the summers.  Not to mention I have been wearing a beanie to hold my hair back, and unfortunately today was no exception.  So we finally got finished with that large task and I had some bonding time with Steve.  Steve is a classic country boy.  He's got the lingo, he's got the beard, he's got the strength.  He is a super nice guy too, besides when it comes to animals that he isn't too fond of i.e. pigs, chickens, goats, etc.  Haha no all jokes aside he's a nice guy just looking for a job.  I asked him if he liked what he does here, and he said not all the time, but hey its pay.  and he was right,  I always like to imagine that everyone should do things that they love, but I guess there are certain hindrances that cause you to take jobs, because they are jobs.  Steve wants to coast guard, and has his physical fitness test next week.  I am sure he will rage all over that test...classic.  And then before the day was over Steve and I had to round up a pig to be brought to the slaughter house.  Two batches of slaughterhouse deliveries in one day! Wow.  Well, after being up from 630 and working from 7 until 430, I am pretty tired.  So nighty.