The "Incident"

It was a different December 24 for us this year.  Since Suzanne and Heath would not be arriving until very late on December 25, we had decided to shift all of our personal Christmas traditions by a day.  So we would do December 24 Christmas meal prep on December 25 and we would open our one gift also on that day.  Then on December 26, we would have our Christmas.

So outside of the Christmas Eve evening service, December 24 was a pretty chill day.  I think the girls may have wrapped some presents but otherwise it was pretty quiet in the house during the morning.  In the afternoon, everyone decided to go for a walk.

On the way back home, Emily and I decided to stop at the chicken coop.  I needed Emily to collect the eggs because I just can not reach into the higher nests and we have been missing eggs because of this.  I was still cleaning the coop when Emily finished and headed to the house with the eggs.  In the meantime, Mike had wandered off to check the game camera and Laura had returned to the house.

When I went to leave the coop, I could not get the door to budge.  I thought it must be stuck although this particular door had never stuck before.  I looked out the window but there was no sign of anyone in the yard.  I checked my pockets but I did not have my phone on me.  In fact, I could see it from the chicken coop window.  It was on a chair on the shed porch.

I reviewed my options.  I could crawl through the chickens door?  I think not.  Besides the fact that I would get dirty, I would not fit through the electronic door nor did I want to break it.  I shoved like crazy at the people door but I was shaking the whole coop with no result.  Only the windows were left.  I pulled off the netting over the windows and then pushed at the window frame (not the glass).  All the chicken coop windows open out but they are also latched on the outside.  The first window would not budge but the second one went flying open and the outside latch landed right on the window sill.

Then I yelled for Emily and Mike since I figured they might still be around outside.  After a couple of tries, the shed door opened.  Turned out while I had been in the chicken coop cleaning, Laura had returned to the shed apartment, where she was staying, to take a shower.  She yelled back at me, "What!", in a not too pleasant tone of voice.  In fact, I am not sure she believed me when I said I was stuck in the shed. She just wanted to take her shower.  Nevertheless, she is the hero of my story as she let me out of the shed.

I left Laura behind and headed to the house.  Laura grabbed her phone to dial Emily to tell her that I was on the warpath because I was blaming Emily for hooking the latch that caused me to be locked in the shed.   However, Emily did not answer the phone in time and I got to deliver the news in person.  As Emily describes it, I was a little sensitive about being locked in the shed.  Sure I would have been rescued eventually.  Somebody would have come looking for me in the two hours before we left for church but I really wanted it to be sooner than later.  Knowing those guys they would have been so happy I was not bothering them about chores that it would have taken awhile before they wondered where I was.

In case you are curious about Emily's side of the story, she says it was just habit that caused her to lock the door behind her with me inside.  Irregardless, now that I had exited the coop, Mike had a new chore that was urgent.  He had to repair the window before the temperature dropped below freezing that very night.  Fortunately I had not done any major damage and he was able to refasten the latch and close the window.  We tucked the netting back until spring when we can rehook it with nails.  Alls well that ends well although I am never going into the chicken coop without my phone again.