Sebastopol geese don’t look real; they look fairytaleish. Here are my latest photos of Woodroffe.
Woodroffe does a lot of swimming and preening.
Somehow the shoes don’t seem to go with the rest of the outfit, do they!
One of the most beautiful things about Woodroffe is that he has no idea how breathtakingly beautiful he is.
When I look at him, and he looks back at me, I feel a sense of absolute peace.
Now that the Emerys are growing up, I have decided to stop babying them. For example, even though only one of them prefers lettuce to cabbage, I am feeding them all lettuce on alternate days. The three emus who prefer cabbage have learned the hard way that sometimes it’s only going to be lettuce so, while they wait for the cabbage, the lettuce-loving emu eats all of the lettuce and the fussy ones go without.
I have also stopped chopping lettuce scraps into bite-sized pieces for them, although I still do this with cabbage because I don’t want them to choke. The daily cabbage chopping has given me a blister between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand, and elicits hysterical laughter from friends who happen to drop by when I am doing this ‘cut lunch’ thing, but, well, you know….
Only one of the emus saves her back by bending into a crouch to eat. She was also the first to figure out how to tear a lettuce apart by herself. Of course I am just assuming she is a ‘she’!
Even though they are in a big yard, I don’t like keeping the Emerys so confined but, as you know from previous posts, letting them out of their yard poses risks. For example, about 50 kms north of here, a pet emu was stolen recently. This has made me realize that human predators are much worse than foxes; the incident described in the news item below is distressing.
I’m not so worried about our emus because I have a new method when I let them out for a sprint. I park the car at the end of the driveway near the road just in case they go that way (I don’t want to have to herd them back from our neighbour’s rose garden again!) If only Baby Turkey would stop scaring the hell out of them, they would happily zigzag around the house block but, once Baby Turkey does her ‘fly up and peck the emu in the face’ thing, they all panic.
The other thing that concerns me is the risk of concussion from falling pears. You see, in the emu yard there are two pear trees with great big pears dropping off all the time. Some of these pears are the size of an emu’s head, so what if….?
Also, why don’t they eat the pears? Then I wouldn’t have to keep chopping up the cabbage!
Etcetera!
Around the time we saw the first scary x-ray of Son’s scoliosis, he wanted to audition for a scary movie that was being directed and produced by a guy whose acting classes he’d attended during various Summer holidays.
“No problem,” I said, when Son told me excitedly that he’d been invited to come up to the movie ‘shoot’ (is that what you call it?) to be an ‘extra’.
So, on the designated day, we set off for the Perth Hills and, for the usual two hours it takes to get to the city, Son and I were happily listening to music, discussing his inevitable fame and fortune, and munching corn chips.
It wasn’t until I got past Perth, had to stop the car to read the map, and discovered that the setting for this movie was a lot farther than anticipated, that things became somewhat tense between Son and me. I will spare you the details of our conversation as I drove up and up and around curves and into forests and valleys and FINALLY, found the campsite where the movie was being filmed. It was, indeed, a very scary site.
One of the directors was very interested in seeing Son’s x-ray, because he thought it might be useful for advertising the movie. I guess that should have given me an inkling into the genre of the movie but I just blithely agreed to bring the x-ray with us. But after we arrived, this director said the producer wasn’t so keen on using real horror to promote fictional horror. And that’s when I understood what kind of movie this was – whoops!
In the hours and hours and hours of waiting for Son, and various other aspiring actors, to do the ‘extra’ thing – like running through the bush, running through the bush and running through the bush, I got VERY bored so, eventually, I went up to the parking lot (a fair way from the movie set, where you’re not allowed to even whisper, let alone talk) and chatted to two guys who I assumed were actors in the movie because they looked like psychos.
“So what’s the movie about?” I asked one of them.
“Not supposed to talk about it,” he said, his greenish teeth catching the sunlight.
“It’s a full-on horror movie about kids in a camp who are locked in cages and tortured. It’s R-rated,” said the other guy, biting into his sandwich nonchalantly.
“WHAT?” I said as calmly as I could. “So are you two the guards in the movie, or the prisoners?”
Greenteeth smiled and said, “We’re not in the movie – we’re just here to cook the food for everyone.”
“Oh,” I said, wondering if I had entered a parallel universe.
HOURS later, Son and I made the loooong journey home, with his x-ray safely in the back seat.
I can’t believe he is an extra in a movie I will never let him see. R-rated! Arghh! But when we were nearly home, he said this:
“That was one of the best days of my life, Mum – thanks!”
SCARY!
This morning I looked out the window to see three perfect moonflowers! I thought we would have to wait until next year (see my ‘moonflower’ posts), so this was a fantastic surprise. In the middle of the photo below you can see the brown shrivelled remains of the previous moonflowers. And, by the time it takes me to finish this post, the three late bloomers will have begun to close up, droop and fade. Their lives are so short and yet so full.
When I was younger and more prayerful than I am now, I used to look for signs all the time – like divine signs I mean. I soon discovered that if you spend all your time looking for divine signs, you end up tripping over your feet a lot! Nevertheless, these three late blooming moonflowers do seem like a good sign.
The fact that there are only three seems like a good sign is rather lovely too – one for Husband, one for Son and one for me. Well, why not!
We have another late bloomer here too – the Malay rooster. As you may or may not recall, he is the offspring of the Malay hen who was given to us months ago. He is now almost full grown and hangs out with the other two roosters, Tina Turner and No-name. The reason No-name doesn’t have a proper name is because, after the fox massacre of so many of our chooks, I stopped naming them.
No-name has a hell of a crow on him – he never stops crowing, day and night, and is much louder than Tina. Perhaps he is trying to prove that he deserves a better name than No-name because he will also sit on my lap and likes to be patted.
I was assuming/hoping that all of the (recently) missing hens were hiding somewhere, sitting on eggs but it’s now been way too long since I’ve seen any of them which can only mean that they have been ‘foxed’. I live in hope however that one day a zillion little chickens will emerge from underneath one of the many sheds. After all, I never expected to see another moonflower this year.
I’ll leave you with a picture of Malay. Isn’t he beautiful! I have decided to call him Moonflower. It’s worth the risk….
Grief is a very strange emotion because it comes and goes. One minute it is like a punch to the throat and the next minute it’s like a memory tickle. Yes, grief does giggle – well, at least mine does.
For example, I have just recovered from one of those sobbing onslaughts – you know the kind? You are cooking dinner, or on the phone to a friend, or feeding the dogs/birds/pets/whatever, and suddenly your voice stops short and you are crying and, no matter how hard you try to stop it, your crying becomes sobbing.
Okay, when this happened to me this afternoon, I went straight outside, and there were the guinnea fowl again! So my grief got the giggles!
I just looked up my ‘bird records’ to discover that our bird adventure began less than a year ago, last March. That made me feel weird because it seems like the birds have been here forever! Previous to the birds, we just had the two miniature male dachschunds, Doc and Blaze. Here are my records fyi:
Tuesday 15th March, 2011
Bought 10 guinnea fowl chicks
Doc and Blaze not happy
Monday 4th April 2011
Bought 5 more guinnea fowl chicks
Doc and Blaze really not happy
Tuesday 12th April 2011
Bought 2 pullet Isa Brown hens with Colleen
Doc and Blaze have to be yarded
Thursday 5th May 2011
Bought 6 peafowl (1 mother and 5 chicks)
Doc and Blaze in shock
Tuesday 17th May 2011
Bought 4 more peachicks
Doc and Blaze in rage
Tuesday 31st May 2011
Bought a breeding pair of peafowl
Doc and Blaze resigned to things
Saturday 11th June, 2011
Bought 2 male golden pheasants – 6 months old
Doc and Blaze want to eat them
Thursday 16th June 2011
Bought 2 female pheasants – 6 months old
Doc and Blaze amazed
Saturday 18th June 2011
Got rooster from Colleen for free ‘Gladiator’
Doc and Blaze scared of Gladiator
Wednesday 22nd June 2011
Bought 3 bantam silkies – 6 months old
Doc and Blaze confused
Wednesday 29th June 2011
Bought 7 Araucana-cross chicks – 5 weeks old
Doc and Blaze don’t know yet – chicks in brooder box
Friday 1st July, 2011
Bought 2 Indian runner ducklings – 3 weeks old
Doc and Blaze don’t know yet – ducklings in brooder box
Monday 4th July 2011
Bought 2 bantam light sussex hens – 6 months old and 1 Malay hen – 1 year old
Doc and Blaze licking lips again
Tuesday 5 July 2011
Bought 2 pekin bantam hens – 1 black 6 months old and 1 mauve a year old
Doc and Blaze have to be kept separate – dog trainer coming out tomorrow
And that’s where my records stop because, not long after the last entry, we experienced the fox massacre (we lost almost all of our chooks in one night), Husband’s health began to deteriorate dramatically, Son’s scoliosos increased dramatically, my stress levels reached for the clouds dramatically, and so on.
So I have no records of when we purchased our beautiful geese, the white peacocks and the emus (although the blog helps with the latter).
It is hard to believe that so much can change so fast.
I wish I could go back in time and change the records.
For example, maybe if I’d warned the dogs, they wouldn’t have had such a negative attitude to the birds. Blaze, Doc’s son, has adjusted to things, but not Doc (below photo deliberately blurred – ha! – due to disturbing material).
Tapper, one of our two Muscovy ducks, has two perfectly good legs but, for some reason, he often prefers to tuck one leg up and stand on the other one. He then does a pirouetty move and, eventually, sticks the tucked-up leg straight out backwards, at a right-angle to his body, to perfectly to align it with his tail feathers. In the photo below you can just see his one ‘foot’ tucked up.
Tapper can do this ‘duck dance’ for ages and ages. His balance is incredible and, when he does this, he doesn’t seem like the Tapper who usually waddles around quite clumsily. Weird! Here he is with that left foot tucked right into his wings.
Whilst Tapper was doing yet another one of his dances the other afternoon, I stood opposite him and tried to stand on one foot for as long as he could. I was pretty good, but, when it came to the pirouette, I kind of fell over. Well actually I did fall over. Yeah, but at least I don’t waddle!
Duck dancing is for the birds……
Yesterday, a friend said we had made a good decision in ensuring Husband’s permanency in the nursing lodge.
Yesterday, a friend said we had made a terrible mistake ‘putting’ Husband into a ‘nursing home’.
Yesterday, a friend said Son’s spinal operation was the best thing we could possibly do, and our only option.
Yesterday, a friend said spinal surgery was a bad idea, that Son might become paralysed and that, at the very least, he would lose flexibility.
Yesterday, a friend said that everything would be all right.
Yesterday, a friend said that things would be very difficult.
Yesterday, I wanted it to be Today.
So I went outside to see Pearl … because she doesn’t say anything.
Son used to be a mighty football player and, at one time, he had dreams of playing professionally. The following photos were taken by one of the dads around four years ago.
Even though we knew Son had a scoliosis, it had only ever been visible via X-ray, and not to the naked eye. He was undergoing various treatments for it, and intensive personal training to prevent it from getting worse, so, one day, after a football game, when he took his shirt off, I got a nasty shock to see his crookedness. With a shirt on, you see, it was unnoticeable. A subsequent X-ray revealed that the scoliosis had increased dramatically in just a few months to a 73% ‘S’ curve. Thereafter we proceeded with every therapy possible while we awaited his first appointment with a spinal surgeon to discuss options.
We were not prepared for the strict advice given. “You will require surgery and will need to quit football immediately – you will never be able to play again,” said the doctor. “This is your spine,” he continued, showing Son the latest X-ray which I hadn’t had the guts to show him myself. After that, the doctor left the room briefly to allow us some space to absorb this verdict. My heart cracked as Son sobbed and sobbed and I wanted to kill the doctor for his abruptness, only realizing later that there was probably no other way of saying it.
This is the latest MRI of Son’s spine. Its curve had increased to nearly 75% in just a few months. I took the photos against the veranda window, so they’re not works of art!
Husband, Son and I have all come full circle in the sense that, instead of resisting the idea of surgery, we now embrace it and Son cannot wait! After all, now that his spine is causing him discomfort (pain and no stamina) and is squishing one lung and one kidney, we have come to accept that there is no choice any more. And we are so lucky to be living in a country where this surgery is available, with one of the best surgeons in Australia.
I am grateful, fearful and excited. Son will be okay. He even said, “Mum, just drop me off at the hospital and go home again; I’ll be fine.”
No way! I am going to have two nights in a luxury motel near the hospital so I can come and go and be close by.
Roll on next Tuesday – how weird that Son’s day of surgery is Valentine’s Day – good omen, I reckon!
jmgoyder 