As you may have seen, we had to evacuate our homestead due to some nearby wildfires. We are safe at Mom’s place, three hours north, along with our dog Rory and pet cats Pippin and Paladin, and the six ducklings.

The rest of the animals are still back at the homestead. The older ducks have their pond, so plenty of water of course, and can root around for bugs, though they may get a bit hungry. I’m more worried about the chickens.

I’m kicking myself that in our rush to evacuate, I didn’t take a few minutes to top up their food dispensers, or at least toss a bag of food in the coop. So they will likely run out of food from the dispensers sometime around now or the next day or two. They also have a couple of partial flock blocks (compressed blocks of supplemental food), which should keep them going another day or two. After that, hopefully they’ll subsist on the eggs they’re laying. If we’re away too long, they’ll probably start eating each other — chickens are vicious little dinosaurs.

They should have enough water for a while. The power is still off; if it comes on, the outdoor waterers would refill, but the water supply requires power, as it’s a well. I suspect the power will remain off until after the evacuation order is lifted.

Depending on how long that takes, we may go home to dead chickens, which would be unfortunate. But not as unfortunate as if the fire reaches our homestead. So far, it’s a couple of miles away, so hopefully won’t get closer. Here’s a map of the fires in the county. And a state-wide one; the “Riverside” fire is the main threat for our homestead. (I don’t publicly post exactly where our homestead is for privacy reasons.)

As of now, that fire has burned over 130,000 acres (of mostly trees), destroyed 33 houses and 20 other structures, and is 0% contained. Not great. But at least there haven’t been any fatalities from it so far.

So, that’s where things are at currently. The main thing is that we’re safe; much appreciation to Mom and her partner for providing a refuge for us, our pets, and the ducklings. Read the duckling posts for more on them.

Let’s enjoy some pictures from before all this went down. Here are the chickens:

I feel like they’re looking at me in an accusing way, as if they could foretell the future… but that’s just how they normally look:

Two ducks on an upturned pot island:

Ducks in the shallow end of the pond:

Sleeping in the shade under a shrub:

Ducks and ducklings:

We were visited by some quail recently:

Yes, the bird feeders will run out too… but they can fend for themselves.

A scrub jay getting some of the last peanuts:

GIF of scrub jay getting peanuts:

Bert flapping his wings:

Ducks on the pond:

Two ducks on the island again:

Betty in the grasses, others at the edge of the pond:

Betty on the rock:

I hope the ducks and chickens all survive this trying time.