The Family Animals

So now that I have been at the house for a while and gotten used to it a bit I though I would tell you about the animals we have here. Before I came I knew we had chickens and that we would temporarily have a goat and a turtle. However they were supposed to be going to Nairobi after the person that used to have the house got settled. It seems that the plan has changed and that we will be keeping both the goat and turtle. I like that because chickens are no fun but a goat and turtle are. So we will start with the chickens. We at this point only have four because one of them got sick and died. This worried my Aunt because she didn’t know it was sick she just suddenly had a dead chicken. After talking to David the gardener/animal care taker, and performing chicken autopsy, she found out that it had been sick but he had not realized that he should tell her. See, the thinking here is that if your chicken is sick you hope it gets better but if not then that is a shame, but my Aunt and I agree that for our chickens (and all other animals) at least the thinking should be "the chickens sick so lets get it meds to make it better." The chickens and the goat (his name is Tembo or "elephant" in Swahili) share a pen together but we let Tembo out into the garden to eat some of the over grown grass and weeds. At first Tembo wasn’t very friendly (he had been bred to be eaten so no one was ever really nice to him) but after a little work he has become much nicer. He really likes it when you rub right between his horns. Finally we have Samantha the leopard turtle. She is at least a foot long and a good eight inches wide but that’s when she in her shell. She has free range of everywhere but the vegetable patch and the chicken/Tembo pen because if she could get in the chickens could get out. I have been working hard to make it so we can keep Samantha when we leave but the biggest problem I think will be the animal control when crossing back into the U.S. but we will see. All in all I really like our animals and am enjoying getting to spend time with them.