Spring & Snow

Today has been a grim weather day: I woke up to a strange, crackling "ping" sound. After panicking that something horrible was happening with my furnace, I realized: Oh, sleet. Now that is something that just makes me want to crawl back under the covers and hide. I hate sleet. I particularly hate the sharp, frozen stinginess of it when it smacks you in the face as you try to go around doing outside chores. I hate how it covers every surface it touches with a rime of cold ice and slippery cold water. The chickens hate it too, mostly because it is driven by wind that forces their feathers up and out of whack. I can't imagine trying to eat with your head down while the wind and ice blows up your ass. The dogs don't seem to care, but then again, I think they are pretty much impervious to weather (aside from thunderstorms).
One of my rabbits has a bad case of wool block. Rabbits groom themselves by licking, and when a long haired angora rabbit grooms herself, she usually swallows wads of hair. That hair gets stuck in her digestive tract, and since rabbits can't barf, it must go down. So, she is one sad rabbit. Last night I got her to eat some lettuce, but this morning, she ignored the fresh leaves I put in her dish. This afternoon, she ate a couple of dried apple slices and a piece of carrot, but she hasn't touched her hay (very abnormal) and she won't even check out the kibble and papaya treats I put in her dish (extremely abnormal). Unfortunately, there isn't a cure for wool block. The rabbit needs to keep eating to keep things moving along the tract, but once the rabbit stops eating, well...I am trying to prepare myself for finding a large, dead bunny in the morning. Poor thing. She may surprise me, and I'll find her mowing through her hay and sucking down water, staring at me with rabbitty nose twitching as if to say "where are my eats, woman?!?"
Between a sick rabbit, cranky chickens, and the smarchy weather beating against my house, I am ready to crawl under the covers until Spring actually arrives.