Ultimate Autumn Weekend: The Livestock Edition

I don't know why but everywhere I go now, I run into alpacas. Frankly, it's wonderful. This is Carhart, hereafter known by Ivan's suggested name: Warm Fuzzy Clothing. Warm Fuzzy Clothing thought he might be interested in his owner's oatmeal cookie, but in the end he realized he was mistaken and preferred to eat the hedge. Whatever makes you happy, Warm Fuzzy Clothing. Just as long as I get to pet you.

I'm not sure snakes are technically livestock, but here's one anyway. I screamed when I saw it, but only because I narrowly missed stepping on it and I don't like the idea of snake guts on my shoes. After I didn't kill it, I stood around and took pictures of it, and we made friends.

This is a picture of donkey's ears. I had a whole bit on "donkey's ears" being cockney rhyming slang for "years" (ex. "I haven't been to a movie in donkey's ears" = "I haven't been to a movie in years") but in the process of looking for a better sample sentence I came across some terrible terrible misunderstandings of this phrase on the internet and I was so horrified I forgot how to be funny. On WikiAnswers, someone asks "Is it donkey's ears or donkey's years?" and the only answer is "Donkey's ears. The ears of a donkey look really long, indeed." Right answer, wrong reason. Some other website I won't name says "donkey's years" is "a pun on donkey’s ears, they being long." Wrong answer, wrong reason. True, you could make sense of "donkey's years" by reasoning since that donkeys have a long lifespan, the saying must refer to a long period of time. But that's like Joey from Friends mishearing "moot point" as "moo point" and coming up with the alternative meaning that a moo point is like "a cow's opinion, it just doesn't matter." It gets the same point across, sure. But it's wrong. Same with "donkey's years." The saying is DONKEY'S EARS and it's COCKNEY RHYMING SLANG for YEARS and that is ALL THERE IS TO IT.

Ah. Nice to have that off my chest. Let's move on to chickens.

I always thought multicolored chickens were dyed after being hatched but it turns out they hatch that way after you inject their eggs with dye. To me this is akin to making cats glow in the dark, which I do not approve of. Why I would instead approve of putting animals through the traumatic process of being bodily dunked in dye, I can't quite say. Possibly because dyed chicks are more likely to carry salmonella and, well, kill you; or possibly because Lord Berners, a British composer whose biography I made many flyers for during my time as a marketeer, used to dye the pigeons at his house, and I always thought it would have been funny to watch someone named "Lord Berners" try to dye birds. Lord Berners also apparently had a giraffe. Sometime I should really read that biography.