winter and animalses

yes - that's animals-es as in lots of them - and not necessarily ours. It's COLD outside!  We had temps below 20 degrees at the beginning of last week, then a snow and ice storm...now it's clear and slightly rainy but still really cold.  This brings out the animals from the green belt...

The chickens seem to be OK with the cold - we put a wool blanket on their coop and shut them in at night so they would stay warm and they seem to be ok.

Then there's the other animals-es..........yea. 
There are 2 juvenile raccoons living under the back porch but of course not just under the porch...the owner has some sheets of plastic down there to move the rain water away from the house so they of course are living on top of the plastic under the wood...noisy!  They are not to much of a pest though.  What's a  real pest is the possum (yes, I know it's really Opossum) twice now it's climbed INTO THE CHICKEN COOP!!!  when we left the door open after dark.  So that's a small detail, thank god it's a small baby possum.  I was so scared it was going to be super agressive and attack us or something.  We had to get a rake and shove it out of the coop and out of the run, fortunately it just went out, scared of us.  It doesn't seem to get that the chickens are possum food which is really really good :)

The one that really annoys me though is whatever has taken up residence in my wall - right under the head of my bed!  rrr!  I can hear it at night eating and moving about - I guess I should be happy there's only one of it but I can't help but wonder if it's going to eat through the drywall and into my room some night. *shiver* EW.  Have I mentioned I'm happy we're moving out of this house?!?

In other news we are about 3/4 of the way done with the major repairs that have to happen to the new house before we can move in.  We'll finish the upstairs this week which means we can start moving boxes while we finish the basement.  The only other things to happen is getting someone to pick up all of the stuff that was left in the house and to clean it.  I'm sooo excited to start our new garden over there!  Yesterday our friend Ben dug the holes for the new chicken/duck run, it is about 5' longer than our current one which will be awesome.  There are lots of pictures coming - I will have to try to make a point to upload some tonight or tomorrow.  For now, I need to go feed chickens and get a move on - another trip to Home Depot this morning for more primer and joint compound then off to the new house to lay my new bathroom floor and finish primer-ing the upstairs.  WHEW.