The Animals on the Roof

So I keep hearing that people in the Middle East like to put their animals on the flat roofs of their homes instead of, say, in a barn or corral. And I am thinking, "Why on earth would you want your chickens, ducks, geese, cows, goats, donkeys and sheep up on a roof? How would they get there? The stairs? And how would they get down? The goats, I can see, because they like to climb, but cows? And how would you get your ducks and geese to stay there?  Chickens, I understand, flutter, but ducks and geese can fly. It just doesn't make sense." The only reason I can think of as to why one would keep one's domesticated animals on the roof was to keep them away from predators. But if cows, sheep and donkeys can climb stairs, so can wild animals who are meat-eaters.

In my book, Hezzie the donkey lived in the workshop on the first floor, presumably safe and sound and locked in a stall. But then again, I based the town of Parazah partly on the little Jewish eastern European villages and partly on big city ghettos where people live in apartments above their shops, and there is nothing to say that it wasn't like that at all. Apartments have been around for thousands of years, and the ancient Persians invented what are basically strip malls, and who is to say that people didn't live on the second floor?

Furthermore, Jesus' mother did not strike me as the kind of girl who was particularly adept at country life. She was from the more affluent town of Arimathea, and was a suburban princess, not someone who was accustomed to gathering eggs or milking cows. This is also why shops and marketplaces were invented, because not everyone makes cheese, beheads chickens or putters around in a vegetable garden if they can possibly avoid it. The one concession I made to the country life was that Mariyam made the family's beer, because back then, that's what women did, along with making bread. But otherwise, Jesus' families were townies, and speaking as a townie, we just don't do cows and chickens and vegetable gardens, as a general rule.