Diamond: Hey, Woody, I think I found a wing. Can we Sebastopols fly?
Woodroffe: No, we can’t fly and what the hell are you doing now, Di? Oh, I can’t look – you are so embarrassing.
Diamond: I think I found my genitals and I might not be a girl after all.
Woodroffe: How thrilling. So what would you like me to call you now – Dick?
Dick: Why do you always have to be so sarcastic, Woody?
The taming of all these birds has made me terribly nostalgic for my childhood in Canada. One of my fondest memories is of the squirrels. The following is my mother’s story. She tells it well, don’t you think?
“Not long after arriving for our big adventure in Canada, when the children were 5, 7 and 9 respectively, Dad told us one evening that we were to wake up really early the next day because he had a surprise for us. He wouldn’t even tell me what it was.
So at dawn the next day, with that secretive Charlie Chaplin walk and wink of his, he bundled us into the car, patting his bulging pockets and driving us off into the unknown.
It was a beautiful municipal park in Toronto, entirely deserted at this early mystic hour.
His finger to his lips he crept ahead of us to the base of the biggest, widest tree, and from his pockets he drew out the bags of peanuts he’d been hiding. Handing them out he showed the children how to tempt the squirrels down from the treetops, to cheekily grab the nuts right out of their hands before scampering triumphantly back to the treetops with their trophies.
We had never experienced anything like this in Australia. Taming native creatures right in their habitat, to eat from their hands gave the kids the most tremendous thrill, and a memory to last forever. I can still taste the dew, and hear the silence of that magic moment.
Later on, when we were invited to stay at the cabin of friends on one of the myriad of lakes north of Toronto, Julie actually tamed chipmunks to eat out of her hands, a feat seldom attained with those tiny timid creatures, but that’s another story. M.L.”
Thanks, Meggles!
I’m a little perturbed, on the white peacocks’ behalf, that the post about them [16th Nov.] seemed to go unnoticed.
They are not used to this lack of ‘ooh/aaah’ attention.
I don’t understand their attention-seeking behaviour, but I do have a grudging respect for their vanity.
Hence this second post in one day – silly really, but I think they were a little hurt by the lack of commentary.
I have asked Son to unsubscribe from my blog for three reasons:
1. He gets a bit freaked out reading about himself, especially if my anecdotes aren’t 110% literal;
2. He is irritated by the daily emails alerting him to my posts (lots of people probably are!); and
3. I don’t want him to know about the six emu chicks I’ve ordered.
I’m not sure if he’s unsubscribed yet and if I mention it again he might get suspicious, so I am just hoping that he will delete the email connecting him to this post.
The six new Emerys arrive in two weeks!
This picture was taken a few weeks ago and I’m very glad I took a few shots like this because all four of these goslings are now HUGE! I have never known anything to grow as fast as a goose (well, except maybe a miniature pig – see previous posts.)
The first time I heard the sound I was outside the front of the house, getting firewood. I thought it was a roll of thunder but when I looked up, the sky was clear, so I realised it must be Son on his drums.
That is until they came around the corner – six geese at full speed, their huge webbed feet slapping the ground into a primeval beat. When they spotted me, their stampede became more frenzied until they reached me and I told them I’d run out of lettuce.
Disappointed, they waddled quietly away.
Note: ‘the patter of little feet’ quote comes from the following poem:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Children’s Hour“
Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day’s occupations, That is known as the Children’s Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me The patter of little feet, The sound of a door that is opened, And voices soft and sweet.
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/longfellow/thechildren.shtml
I have never been a morning person so when someone says “good morning” to me I usually feel like punching them. I much prefer the evenings, the midnights, the twilight hours before the sun comes up.
Until now.
Now, I’m getting up before 6am every morning (unheard of!) I can’t wait to get up. It doesn’t matter what the weather is like, I have this shy new relationship with the morning and feel slightly guilty about our years of conflict. In fact, I feel that the time has come to declare my love of the morning.
Why?
It’s the birds. First it’s the peacocks at the back door, then it’s the chickens. I give them all a bit of bread, boil the kettle, pour a coffee, then go out to the chookyards to let ‘the gang’ out for the day.
Then I distribute lettuce, bread and other tantalising scraps to the throng of birds. They surround me, jump onto my lap, squabble, squawk, nibble the back of my shirt and generally run around like children just let out for recess.
Yes, the morning and I have a great relationship now!
The above is a photo of a lithograph by John Gould (information link below). It was emailed to me by the gallery exhibiting and selling some of his work this week. Having bought a couple of lithographs from this gallery over the years, we were on their mailing list so I thought it was an extraordinary cooincidence to receive an invitation that featured this famous picture of a red-tailed black cockatoo just days after I had acquired Wantok. As I had paid a small fortune for her, I now wondered if it might have been wiser to simply buy a picture – this picture.
I’m not stupid, but I am a bit naive. Wantok cost a bit, but guess what this picture was priced at?
$27,500AUS
I think I’ll just frame the invitation picture!
Or maybe not; after all, I have the real thing – I have Wantok!
http://australianmuseum.net.au/The-Gould-League-of-Bird-Lovers
I have just remembered a weird coincidence in light of this blog; the first ever short story I wrote as an adult was entitled ‘Wings’. It wasn’t published for years and it wasn’t published with that title, however its wings motif was, and still is, a powerful memory for me, an etching in my psyche.
I was a new nurse and ‘Simeon’ was the patient for whom I was primarily in charge when I was on duty. It was a hostel for multiply disabled people, primarily children. I was 23 and so was Sim but he was the size of a small, skinny child; he looked about eight years of age.
Sim’s diagnosis was complicated. He was deaf, mute, epileptic, quadriplegic and he had a severe deformity of the spine. Having never received adequate physiotherapy, his body had contractured into the fixed crookedness of a series of triangles. He looked a bit like a mathematical model; his elbows and knees were bent inwards and were fixed that way. It would have been impossible to straighten any of his limbs without breaking them, so the only way to keep him comfortable was to position him on a beanbag.
Simeon did not look like a human being; he looked like a broken bird.
There is more to tell about Simeon but I will save that for another post. It has been strange to all of a sudden remember him – just today. He died five years ago.
Most people who keep backyard chickens do so in order to provide themselves with a supply of eggs. But when we first acquired a few chooks, I was so enamoured with their personalities and fascinated by the fact that they were so tameable, that I forgot about the egg thing.
Yes, I had set up nesting boxes and bought a little chookhouse but I was so fond of picking the chickens up and giving them hugs that I didn’t care if they laid eggs or not. Occasionally, out of curiosity, I would look inside the nesting boxes but there were never any eggs anyway.
Then, one day I found a dozen eggs inside an old crate at the back of our garage. They were huge and I knew they must have come from our one and only Isa Brown hen. I was thrilled and we ate them over the next few days – delicious!
But she never laid any eggs there again. In fact I have no idea where she lays her eggs and I can’t follow her around 24/7 can I. Now, since chickens average an egg per day, this means that, having had Isa for around six months now, there must be a couple of hundred eggs … somewhere!
But where? Even she can’t find them!
Okay, okay, two people figured it out. Yes, Wantok is a red-tailed black cockatoo!
Here is some information:
jmgoyder 