Cheepacabra has left the building

Flown the coop. Bought the farm. Whatever you want to call it. Cheepacabra, Queen of the Chickens, is no more.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet queen,

and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Archaeological find of the day

Walking around Spenardo del Sur after a good rain is sorta like beachcombing. You never know what you'll find.

While piddling around in the garden today, I found this die-cast toy car - a Fiat Abarth. The internet tells me it was made by Tootisetoy in the seventies. I had a bunch of these little metal toy cars when I was a kid. There's a good possibility that this one was mine.



I found this in garden where the old barn used to be. The barn fascinated me as a kid. It was full of all kinds of cool stuff and I wasn't allowed to go in there. "Too dangerous" they told me. "It could fall down any minute." Of course this made me want to go in there even more.

I took this picture of the barn in the early 1980s:





By the time I was finally allowed to go inside, it looked like this:



Of course, just because I wasn't allowed to go in the barn as a kid doesn't mean I stayed out of the barn. Which is why it wouldn't surprise me if this little toy car was dropped by yours truly 35 years ago right smack dab in the middle of the barn.


This is what the barn looks like now:


Except that this photo was taken a year ago and I've since removed those last few boards on the right (but the big pile of rusty tin in the upper left is still there) and I put up a sign that says "NO CHICKENS ALLOWED." Too bad chickens can't read.

It'll look nicer in a month when the veggies and flowers come up.