An Evening Walk Down The Lane...en masse!

Last night we had our friend, Mark Tasse, over for Lost night. Every Tuesday night we all have supper together and then watch Lost, which is coming close to the end of it's last season. Last night was heart-breaking. It's an surprising event when the sadness of the happenings in the show trump the confusion of it all, but what can I say. We're junkies.

After supper but before Lost came on, there was a gorgeous double rainbow outside. I wanted to go for a walk down the lane, and the Marc(k)s accommodated me and came along. We also took Teddy, my friend's dog that we were keeping for the night, our dog Mini, the rabbit and the two kittens.

The dogs "get" the walk thing like no one's business. They love it. They live for it. It is air and water to them. Pippin the bunny enjoys walks because the dogs are there. He could do without a traipse down the lane, but he can't do without Mini, so along he comes. He has a habit of stopping in the middle of the lane, usually on the way back, for an emergency paw cleaning. There is only so much lane mud a bunny can handle. It takes a bit of coaxing to get him moving again, if not a gentle boot in the behind, but he is learning to co-operate.

The kittens are a different thing all together. I worked out a plan to acclimatize them to walking the lane. I was going to take them out, one at a time, teach them the drill, work them up to eventually walking the whole thing by themselves. Yada yada yada. We couldn't all go and leave one behind. We'd be hearing the wails of despair all the way down. Talk about putting a damper on things.

So we scooped up both kittens, walked partway down the lane, and put them on the ground and hoped they would follow. They stood uncertainly for a few seconds until one brother smacked the other brother upside the head for fun. Then they rolled around together on the lane a bit and headed, bouncing and tripping, back to the house. I picked up Sheldon, and left Sawyer on the lane by himself. He had no choice to follow. It's one thing to be unspeakably brave when your one pound fluff-ball of a brother is at your side. Alone, it's best to stick with the gang. He followed manfully. After a bit, I put Sheldon down, scooped up Sawyer and repeated the process. When I put them both down together then, they just knew to follow. They ended up walking the entire length of the lane. It was an impressive feat for such little guys.

So we had a lovely evening. Marc did mention that it would be interesting if we could get the chickens to follow us on our walks down the lane.


**sigh**

Oh, there are only nine days to go to hatching day! Everything seems to be going well. I keep dreaming about chicks pecking out of eggs. Fun!