Do you recycle?

Last night Maggie (pictured above and currently barking her head off behind me) brought something into the house. Don yelled for me to check it out, but I was a little freaked because it looked like a mouse tail hanging out of one side! Maggie has been known to bring in "gifts" the cats left us at the back door. She's also been known to carry fish to the house from the pond and has been caught carrying turtles around (always unharmed and released in a safe place).

Fortunately, she did not have a mouse. Maggie had the biggest cicada I have ever seen in my life. It was one big bug! Unfortunately, it was almost dead so I told Don to toss it into the chicken pen so someone could have it for breakfast.

You see, we're big into recycling here. Aluminum is taken to the recycling center, leftovers are fed to the critters (dogs, chickens and ducks) and other items are put in the garden compost. It's a wonderful circle, especially when the animals are involved.

The chickens and ducks eat scraps and  vegetable peels which they turn into eggs for us to eat and fertilizer for the garden, which grows food for us to eat, which in turn provides scraps and vegetable peels for the chickens, etc. The horses eat grass, which saves us gas and time to mow it. That grass is turned into fertilizer for the garden, which provides food for us and the chickens, and so forth.

Last night I cleaned out the vegetable bin in my fridge and left the bucket of old stuff on the floor. I was planning to take it out to the compost pile today, but Maggie and Caoimhe had other plans. Caoimhe has obviously convinced Maggie that over sized cucumbers are REALLY good, although I think Maggie just chewed hers up. I reached this conclusion when I saw the huge mess on the living room floor. Caoimhe, on the other hand, loves to eat cucumbers. Yes, she is a strange dog.

Now, if I could just figure out a way to recycle all the dog hair I sweep up...