jmgoyder

wings and things

Mar 31

Hints of harmony

by jmgoyder

I hesitate to speak too soon, but it looks like my patience has paid off and familiarity has bred harmony rather than contempt when it comes to interactions between our dogs and our birds.

This morning we let the dogs out of their yard and kept the gang in theirs (we usually do the opposite). I sat outside and kept watch because even though the geese, ducks and emus were safely in their own yards, all of the other birds were out and about because they can fly. So the peafowl, guinnea fowl, turkeys, chooks and pheasant, were all roaming around freely and seemingly unafraid of the dogs who they usually only see through a fence. I was particularly worried about the chooks but so far so good and I’ve been able to come inside.

Here is Jack, the Irish Terrier, with the Bubbles and Baby Turkey. Now Jack, who is less than a year old, has never exhibited any ferocious hunting tendencies anyway, but he does like to chase things. In this sense, he and Baby Turkey have a lot in common so you could say they have both met their match and the chasing has stopped.

Interestingly, Doc and Blaze (our father and son miniature dachschunds) are so busy fighting each other at the moment that neither has attempted to hunt down any of the birds. I’m not sure what is going on with those two but lately they never stop arguing and last night Doc gave Blaze a nasty bite on the ear when Son was feeding them. Doc is very jealous when it comes to our attention so poor Blaze has to constantly defer to his father and stand back.

Another harmony challenge has been the introduction of a new gander to the gang. He was delivered to us by a neighbour the other day because he had lost his mate and was very lonely. The poor guy is quite scared of Godfrey’s gang and yesterday, when Son and I got back from Perth, we found him all alone by the gate and had to ‘herd’ him back to the gang and put them all in the same pen. We are calling him Leroy and hoping that with enough time in the yard with the others, he will eventually make a friend and be okay. Son says it reminds him of being ‘the new kid’ at school. The following photo is not a good one but it does show this new kid’s challenge. Leroy is on the right, Seli is on the left and Godfrey is in the background (as always!) Sometimes redeye isn’t a bad effect!

In a couple of hours I pick Husband up for the weekend so I better go and hose down the area outside the back door which all our birds seem to think is the toilet – arghh!

Animal Wings

30 Comments »
Mar 27

Am I allowed to eat these?

by jmgoyder

It has been a thrill to watch our two miniature dachschunds, Doc, and his son, Blaze, gradually get used to the domesticated birds here. One of the things that has helped, of course, is that the peafowl, guinnea fowl, geese, turkey, ducks and chooks, are all bigger than the dogs now. Even our one remaining pheasant is around the same size!

When these birds were smaller, it was far too dangerous to let the dogs anywhere near them. Now that they are not only outnumbered but also dwarfed, they have lost their bird-hunting confidence, which is a great relief. Before, when they gave chase, there was no stopping them and we lost one young peacock, one young turkey, one young chicken and a pheasant that way. So, for the months it has taken for the birds to grow big, Doc and Blaze have been confined to one yard while the birds are free-ranging, and vice versa – not an ideal situation at all. It’s lovely now because they even seem to understand that it is okay to kill the wild rabbits (of which there are hundreds!) but not okay to kill the birds.

So the mingling together has well and truly begun and, as long as I am there to supervise this extraordinary reconciliation between the hunters and the hunted, things remain calm. The main thing Doc and Blaze now growl at each other about (they do this a lot!) is the feathers that are everywhere. Now I’m sure they don’t want to eat the feathers because it would be a bit like eating salt and pepper without the steak, but they do like to sniff and lick them – go figure!

They even do this hesitantly! Especially if they know I am watching – ha!

Animal Wings

17 Comments »
Mar 25

The waterbabies!

by jmgoyder

Yesterday I accidentally flooded a corner of the emu yard. I’d left the hose running in one of their troughs and gone off searching for Tapper (the duck who keeps disappearing and returning from nowhere). When I came back, this is what I found!

The Emerys were in a state of absolute bliss!

Animal Wings

40 Comments »
Mar 24

Funnier stuff

by jmgoyder

With my camera charged and working, I took a lot of pictures this afternoon but this is my very favourite, because it shows the fledgling relationship between Doc and the Bubbles. I think compatibility is about to happen – yeeha!

Animal Wings

18 Comments »
Mar 24

0.1%

by jmgoyder

Last night, I couldn’t sleep which is unusual for me. Husband was back at the nursing lodge and Son had gone (first time since surgery), to a friend’s place for the night. He took Husband’s 18th birthday present with him – a bottle of Bacardi – but we won’t go there!

I wasn’t lonely, because I love being alone; and I wasn’t scared of the dark or the wind, but I just couldn’t stop my mind galloping. So I turned the light on and finished reading a book called Waterlemon (no, that’s not a typo) by Ruth Ritchie in which she describes her journey through the ordeal of her husband’s bicycle accident, subsequent brain injury and recovery.

What struck me most about this story was not her courage in dealing with the events (with two small children and two ‘step-children’), or her courage in supporting her lovely husband throughout the long days, weeks and months of his convalescence and homecoming, but her courage in actually naming the family members who were unsupportive. I mean she actually named these people, all of whom were from her husband’s family.

As I was reading, I started to get a bit worried about how open she was in her slicingly angry, but accurate, descriptions of these people. I wondered if they might be hurt to read about themselves portrayed in such a manner. After all, all stories have two or more sides, don’t they?

But, because Ruth used transcripts from real telephone conversation and emails, I realized her story was legitimate; not only that, once her husband recovered enought to come home again, he obviously didn’t object to the book being submitted for publication, despite his ‘family’ being so exposed.

So, yeah, this has really got me thinking about how, despite my honesty in this blog, I have been, unlike Ruth, pretty lax in mentioning the amazing 99.9% of Husband’s family, and his fantastic old and new friends, and my own family, who have given him/us support, love, assistance and so on. But I have also been pretty wimpy in not mentioning the 0.1% of his family who have, over many years now, broken his heart over and over again in ways that I cannot even bear to express.

The beautiful thing is this: I finally unwimped myself and banished that 0.1% from our lives and wondered why on earth I hadn’t done this earlier, years ago. It’s actually not that hard to say “go away!” Godfrey does it all the time!

Animal Family Wings

38 Comments »
Mar 18

Okami and Uluru

by jmgoyder

Our two alpacas, Okami and Uluru, are the gentlest creatures I have ever come across. Son gave them their names when we first got them and, because we’d been told that their presence here would deter the foxes that lurk somewhere out there, their names reflect this. ‘Okami’ is a Japanese word that roughly translates to ‘wolf with spiritual powers’ (my paraphrase), and ‘Uluru’ is, of course, the Aboriginal word for that big brown ‘pebble’ in the centre of Australia, previously known as Ayers Rock. Somehow their heavily symbolic names don’t seem to match their placid personalities. I don’t think they could kill a fly, let alone a fox!

Here are some recent photos of them:

They do everything very slowly; they wander around slowly, chew grass and the wheat I give them slowly, stare and blink slowly. When my heartbeat is galloping I only have to watch Okami and Uluru for a minute or so and their tranquility calms me down.

This morning I tried to beat Okami in an unblinking competition but he easily won. Perhaps this is how they deter the foxes?

Animal

29 Comments »
Mar 12

‘blogetiquette’

by jmgoyder

Blogging about blogging is, yes, a little strange perhaps, however, as a relative newcomer to this form of communication and writing, I have decided to coin the term ‘blogetiquette’ because I think it needs to be one word – a neologism if you like! (I’m hoping that the annual dictionary re-writers will pick this up and make me famous!)

So, the blogetiquette rules I’ve decided on for myself include:

  • have respect for the parents of the blog (in my case, wordpress.com)
  • only subscribe to other blogs if you are genuinely interested (not because you want them to subscribe to yours)
  • read all of the posts written by your fellow bloggers before publishing your own
  • reply, or at least, acknowledge all comments made to you on your blog – again, before you publish your own
  • get permission before you reblog someone else’s post (this is only because reblogging has recently become fraught)
  • limit yourself to less than 5 posts per day or you might annoy people with the email build-up (the most I do is 4 and that’s not often because I’ve had some negative feedback about overposting!)
  • be grateful for any awards or nominations you receive (whether you accept them or not)
  • respect your readers and subscribers
  • never hit the ‘like’ button unless you really do like the post
  • always be honest in your own posts
  • never criticise other people’s posts

I’m sure I could think of more but those are the ones I usually adhere to now that I have made the transition from novice to fledgling.

Speaking of fledglings, these two peacocks have nearly grown their ‘King’ feathers …

… whereas poor old King is still mourning the loss of his own (don’t worry, he’ll grow them back soon!)

Of all the birds who live here, it is the peacocks and peahens who have the best etiquette skills in terms of their respect for each other and for us too. When they take bread from my hand, instead of nearly swallowing my arm (as the geese do), they make a soft clicky noise as if they are saying ‘thank you’.

They have birdetiquette down to a much finer art than we will ever get blogetiquette!

If you have any blogetiquette tips, please share them….

Politely yours

Julie

Animal Family Wings

46 Comments »
Mar 11

Unexpected

by jmgoyder

This afternoon, I drove the old ute/truck up to the highway get petrol, so I could take some rubbish to the dump (we don’t have rubbish collection here because we are too far out of town). After filling the tank, I went into the shop and got some orange juice and, as I was paying, a tall, elderly man in a white shirt and bicycle shorts tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I were heading east.

At first I was a bit alarmed at being tapped on the shoulder by someone I’d never met before but, after I said, “Sorry, no, I’m going the other way”, I watched him go to the refrigerator and get some water. He was perspiring a lot because it’s 40c today – very hot!

I was still paying when he came back to the counter and I said, “I’m so sorry but my son has just had an operation and I need to get back home with this orange juice. Can you just have a rest here and carry on? I’m sure someone will be able to give you a lift.” He then told me he had already ridden over 100 kms today and his destination was only a further 12 kms. I said, “sorry” again and left.

But on the way home to Son, I thought better and decided to get home, get Son and go back and rescue the man. Son (despite his philanthropic ideals) was less than impressed. Nevertheless we raced back to the petrol station in the ute and the cyclist was still there. I beeped the horn and yelled out, “We’ve come to rescue you!” His look of relief made it all worthwhile.

It was only then that we remembered that the passenger space in the ute would only allow two people, not three, especially one with a massive plastic brace on him. So, as the cyclist was loading his bicycle into the back of the ute, I went back into the shop and (yay!) one of the customers was a neighbour and agreed to take Son home. Whew.

Then, on our way to the cyclist’s destination, he told me that he was 72, that his brother had died yesterday, that he loved cycling, and that he wrote poetry. I then told him a bit about Husband, Son, the birds and my own writing.

When I dropped him off, he rummaged around in his knapsack and gave me one of his books of poetry. He signed it, I shook his hand, he kissed me on the cheek, I said “Thanks for the book!” and I watched him ride into the heat glare.

Then I turned around and headed home to face Son’s glare – hehe!

Animal Wings

52 Comments »
Mar 8

Howling at the moon

by jmgoyder

Tonight, Son and I both howled at the moon. I don’t think we have ever done this before and it is not something I would recommend!

We hadn’t planned on howling at the moon together, but our mutual differences (yeah, one of those paradoxes), the emu fiasco, and the absence of Husband, reduced us both to such grief that the howling just happened.

Perhaps it was cathartic; perhaps not. Neither of us have ever been caught up in the net of self-pity, but tonight we were caught off-guard by a moonlit view of everything and it was overwhelming. So we howled. We howled at each other, with each other, and with the moon, until our voices were hoarse and the dogs became frightened.

Luckily we don’t have neighbours living closeby or they might have called the police!

Animal Family

8 Comments »
Mar 8

This little piggy

by jmgoyder

Remember Vegemite?

You know – the cute little miniature pig who grew, like Mathilda, into an unminiature pig and who now lives on a proper pig farm?

Well, Vegemite has just become a mother to six piglets! The next photo is courtesy of Gavern, who now looks after Mathilda and Veggie.

In a couple of long-ago posts, I described why I had to relinquish the pigs; I was very attached to them, so it was terribly difficult to let them go. But the wonderful thing is that they are now in a much more suitable place and obviously very happy, so I am grateful for that.

I am becoming an expert in the art of letting go. If I get any better at it, I will have nothing left to hold on to….

Congratulations, Vegemite!!!

Animal

9 Comments »
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