Names for Pets

Hi all. Jeremy (of course!) remembered that Earl's girl name was "Nellie", (back when she was still suspected to be a hen) and Bernadette and Nellie were Jeremy's pick of the chicks to train to sit nicely on his shoulder while he was in the backyard with them. Got me thinking about other nick-names for the pets, as I let Rocky out of the crate just now and called him "Rock-man".  Other names for him are "Rock-mania" (depending on how crazy he's being), "Rock-meister", and of course--"Rocky Balboa".  His nicknames are the most creative, which probably isn't saying much...... Shadow is easier--just her real name or "Shadow-girl". I tend to call the cows "Pretty girls", "Bossy Bessie", "Bessie-girl", "Little Lucy" (or Little Lou), and Bess and Lu, nothing really imaginative there.  Conrad the rooster was named after we took his regal stature into account and the classic way he struts around when he's looking out for his hens. Earl was NOT named after Chris' childhood friend and our neighbor for 15 years, contrary to popular belief.  I guess that was kind of regal name, too, once we knew that "Nellie" just didn't fit him anymore. Most of the chickens don't get names, because there are over 60 now, but one big fluffy black one that hatched from our eggs this spring is "Brownie", because she has the most beautiful brown feathers sprinkled through her shiny black ones.  Jeremy has "Hawk" and "Eagle", two Ameraucana chicks from this spring, who I suspect weren't fathered by Conrad, but by the constantly-escaping Barnevelder roosters which we kept way too long before finding a butcher.  They just look too much like the Barnevelder hens, but are small, which could also prove that they were fathered by too-young roosters strutting their stuff behind Conrad's back. "Blackbeard" is the lone Cayuga duck that hatched in the fall from eggs that went through 2 power outages.  He seems to have turned out to be a "she", as she keeps nesting in the chicken-coop by the growing nestful of duck-eggs. From Palatine's illegal back-yard flock, the only one left is a white Leghorn named "Shoulder Hen".  Buffalo and "Crooked Beak" both came down with and died from a respiratory thing that seems to hit the flock when the weather is damp. Barn kitties "Spartan" and "Charlie" were from an alpaca farm.  When we visited for Alpaca Days that first fall after we bought the place, there they were in a dog crate.  Jeremy and his friend Luke were there with me.  Someone had dumped them off at another farm, and the alpaca people were trying to find a farm for them.  Michael and Jeremy were already counting on each being able to have a barn cat, so after a quick call to Jeff (who was at Michael's Immanuel basketball game that afternoon in Palatine) we brought them "home" to spend the winter in the barn.  The only time Spartan and Charlie saw the inside of the house in Palatine was when I hauled them all the way from Woodstock for our vet to check them out.   (Lots of chickens and the 2 cats lived here for 9 months before we even moved in.  I was here at least every other day to take care of all those animals and to try to get things ready for the big move.....) Our house cats are Midnight and Sly, but there don't seem to be any funny nicknames for either of them.  But it's worth noting---last year before we lived here, I caught mice inside the house for almost 2 weeks straight before the hard freeze outside, and again in the spring.  Jeff catches mice out in the garage now, but, inside the house, the only mouse I've caught in a trap since we moved here in August was in Jeremy's bathroom (last week).  The door is closed now so that the cats don't get in and bother the baby chicks in the bathtub, and sure enough, that's where the mouse wasn't taken care of by Sly or Midnight! New chicks are due to hatch in 6 days, if everything went well with the incubation.  ;) And now, on the last day of January, I have to finally get the last of the ornaments off the Christmas tree and try to haul it outside to get the living room back in order.  Seems to happen every year, despite good intentions to do it much earlier. Have a good day, everyone. Laura.