{"id":132,"date":"2017-09-11T00:01:34","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T04:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kirabug.com\/?p=132"},"modified":"2017-09-08T21:37:08","modified_gmt":"2017-09-09T01:37:08","slug":"day-11-cows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/2017\/09\/day-11-cows\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 11: Cows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Day 11:<\/p>\n<p>Today, I became a rancher.<\/p>\n<p>So there&#8217;s wheat down here. It&#8217;s probably not really wheat, but it&#8217;s some kind of grass that comes to seed. I planted some of it a few days ago because I was really coddamned hungry and, just like everything else on this lunatic planet, it came to maturity in just a couple of days.<\/p>\n<p>(&#8220;Lunatic&#8221; seems fitting. The moon is huge and scary and rolls across the sky every night, leering at me.)<\/p>\n<p>My primary goal was to make some kind of pathetic bread with it. Wheat flour ground between two of the tons of stones I&#8217;ve removed, water, bake in forge.<\/p>\n<p>But now, maybe I can make good bread, with milk and eggs in it!<\/p>\n<p>OK, let me move back a step. So I cut down the wheat in my tiny garden, and gathered both seeds and wheat stalks from it. I planted some of the seed, but I had too much to replant&#8230; so I started wandering around, looking for another good site to turn into a garden&#8230; and I suddenly felt like I was being followed.<\/p>\n<p>Of course I assumed that it was the camo-giraffe-hell-bomb creatures, and dove to the ground. But just like the other day, I was greeted not with a bombastic BOOM but with a puzzled MOOO.<\/p>\n<p>The cows were quite interested in my wheat stalks. In fact, they were following me.<\/p>\n<p>Slowly, casually even, I wandered across the field back toward the cow hole\/back porch\/covered cave entrance I&#8217;d dug out. The cows followed. \u00a0I stepped into the hole. They followed. I fed them the wheat. THEY BEGAN TO FRATERNIZE. And while they were fraternizing, I quickly piled some stone up into the area they&#8217;d just left, trapping them on my porch.<\/p>\n<p>I HAVE A COW PORCH.<\/p>\n<p>And also I now have a baby cow, because apparently these animals gestate for about 10 minutes. The baby cow isn&#8217;t \u00a0exactly small. I&#8217;m pretty sure it outweighs me.The amount of energy the mama cows must use has to be pushing the laws of physics.<\/p>\n<p>Do you remember the ancient film Gremlins, where the creatures got wet and suddenly multiplied by the dozens? Apparently that&#8217;s how wheat affects the cows here. I&#8217;ll have to keep that in mind when deciding when and how to feed them.<\/p>\n<p>But the effect isn&#8217;t limited to cows. I noticed not long after luring the cows to safety that two chicken-ducks were following me when they noticed I was carrying some of the wheat seeds. (This must be some kind of superfood. Can&#8217;t say it makes an overly tasty bread though.)<\/p>\n<p>The chicken-ducks were just as easy to lure as the cows, and just as easy to breed. They just prefer seed over stalk. So now I have three birds and three cows, and in theory, I can gather eggs, milk, and flour.<\/p>\n<p>If I go get those pigs again, I could probably have some bacon too.<\/p>\n<p>I think I&#8217;ll need more fencing before that.<\/p>\n<p>Also some fencing to keep the skeletons out of my cow hole would be good planning.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow&#8217;s going to be a busy day.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_283\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-283\" style=\"width: 2732px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/One-Among-The-Dead-12.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-283 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/One-Among-The-Dead-12.png?resize=525%2C394&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"My first cow, Bessie, a sketch\" width=\"525\" height=\"394\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kirabug.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/One-Among-The-Dead-12.png?w=2732&amp;ssl=1 2732w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kirabug.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/One-Among-The-Dead-12.png?resize=300%2C225&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kirabug.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/One-Among-The-Dead-12.png?resize=768%2C576&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kirabug.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/One-Among-The-Dead-12.png?resize=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kirabug.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/One-Among-The-Dead-12.png?w=1575&amp;ssl=1 1575w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-283\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">My first cow, Bessie<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Day 11: Today, I became a rancher. So there&#8217;s wheat down here. It&#8217;s probably not really wheat, but it&#8217;s some kind of grass that comes to seed. I planted some of it a few days ago because I was really coddamned hungry and, just like everything else on this lunatic planet, it came to maturity &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/2017\/09\/day-11-cows\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Day 11: Cows&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-one-among-the-dead"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdUhYo-28","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542,"href":"https:\/\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirabug.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}