Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Lizards, snakes and cows oh my!

Ok, so it's been a while. It's past midnight and I can't sleep.
About a week and a half ago we went to a Kibbutz and visited the dairy farm. Coolest thing I have seen in a long time. Not sure how many hows they had, but several hundred. They hang out in open pens, that have a self manure cleaning thingy, that can tell when it's full of shit. lol Sorry I had to do it. It sweeps it all out so the cows don't stand around in it. They spray water with a fan and it totally keeps the flies down. So when the cow decides it's time to be milked, yes, the cow, it walks down a pathway to a holding pen. It stands in line with all the other cows. While it waits, it gets a nice shower. Then when there is an opening, a door opens, the cow steps in and off it goes! The milking area is like a merry go round for cows. They come in one door, get hooked up to the automatic milker, go around the circle, get detached and exit. Then a new cow enters! They play music which apparently soothes the cows. Down the ramp they go. But they don't go straight back to the pen. They get in line to be scrubbed by the auto scrubber! Darnedest thing! They take turns, walk up to this large round brush, lift it with their heads, which activates it, and the walk back and forth letting it scrub in just the right spots. When it's done a new one goes up and does the same thing! So then they walk along a new pathway to a different holding pen. There is no one telling them to go, no one telling them when it's time to be milked. It's all up to them!
Maybe happy cows don't live in California but in Israel!
With the cooler weather all sort of creatures have come out of hiding. Not only nasty looking bugs, like the dead (thank you God) huge cockroach that was on the veranda, or the huge spider that the cat thankfully ate for us. But Lizards and snakes. We have no idea where the snakes are coming from. Fortunately for us, they are babies. But that means there is a mom somewhere close by. The first one was discovered inside. Promptly had it's head cut off and tossed into the yard by our resident teen-aged adventurist Maher. aka Lena's boyfriend. Then the other day after Lena discovered a cool lizard down stairs, good lizard, Jay and Lena were walking down the front steps when a baby snake dropped from who knows where to their feet! We could not find said baby snake and I have been living in fear of accidental coming upon it with my bare feet. I have since discovered about 6 new bug bites just from today... oy today, I'll leave that for another time.















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