Liam's Beaver activity for this week was a tour of Malak's hobby farm. Yes, you guessed it, Malak is Ian's Beaver leader name. The kicker though, is that Malak is currently in Washington DC on business. This left me, Malak's right hand woman, to host two dozen five and six year olds plus their parents. In fairness, I could have played the pregnancy card and opted out but I was pretty sure I could handle it. What could go wrong, right?
Honestly, on the whole it went well. We rotated though five farm "stations" that I had set up.
#1 Feeding the lambs corn and oats.
#2 Making the chickens' "bed" by spreading hay on the coop floor.
#3 Feeding Charlie brussels sprouts leaves.
#4 Cutting marigolds and zinnias to make farm bouquets.
#5 A mock honey bee hive inspection with cut comb honey tasting.
The Beavers had fun; one kid even told me at the end that this was the best night of his life. High praise. At least nobody got bitten this year.
The farm animals went crazy with all the excitement. Martha tried to escape into the great beyond (through the open garage door) twice. Mellie got into the box gardens and chowed down on carrot tops like it was her last meal on Earth. We lost one brown chicken in the madness (I found her later). Charlie was the worst of all. She was so riled up that she would not go into her barn after everyone left. She absolutely refused to walk on her lead across the yard to her night time paddock. I finally just dropped her lead and let her get it out of her system. In the pitch black she bounced around the backyard like a bucking bronco on crack. We ignored her. While the boys and I were occupied chasing errant chickens into the coop (also in the pitch black), Charlie eventually meandered to her paddock and I was eventually able to entice her into the barn with a combination of soothing words (aka veiled threats) and extra grain. Holy cow (beaver?) - what a gong show. Needless to say, the boys were still up at 8 pm and both were wired after all these farm escapades.
The only ones who missed out on the action were the dogs. The last thing I needed was Charlotte escaping for a cross-country expedition or Emily getting loose and attacking a chicken in front of the Beavers, so the dogs got left inside the house.
After all the excitement was over, I dragged my thoroughly exhausted self upstairs to find Charlotte like this.
I think she might have sympathy exhaustion.
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