If you were a fox, would you attack or retreat?
If I were a fox, I would retreat!
Sitting on the fence
Out of all of the ducks and geese, Tapper, our female Muscovy duck, is the only one who can fly. Even Zaruma, the Muscovy drake, can’t fly even though he is supposed to be able to. So, because I put all of them into their yards for the night, it always amazes me to find Tapper outside the next morning, having a lovely time all by herself.
For weeks I had assumed Tapper simply flew up and over the high fence of the yard, but I had never seen her do it. During the day I would often see her fly off the ground (to a height of around 2 feet) and horizontally across the lawn, but the yard fences are very high now (about 7 feet) so, one evening, after locking the gang in, I sat and watched because I wanted to see her fly vertically up and over fence.
I watched and waited from a bit of a distance. Then Tapper did her trick and, when I saw her do it, I couldn’t stop laughing because she doesn’t fly up and over; she actually climbs the fence using her big webbed feet and her wings to flap herself upward. Then she sits on the fence, like this.
Sometimes Tapper poses on top of the fence for ages, swaying back and forth (she can do this for over an hour!), as if to say to the others, ‘You think I’m a little squirt, but now I’m the biggest – nyahnyahnyah!!!’
She has the most incredible sense of balance!
Mr and Mrs Duck
Daffy and Dotty are our two Indian runner ducks. They are inseparable and, for some reason, the other birds ostracize them – like a strange avianish racism. They can’t fly, but they can run (hence the name of this particular breed I guess) and they run exactly like Basil in Fawlty Towers. They only use the pond after the rest of the gang of geese and ducks are finished ‘bathing’ because they’re so timid.
The absolutely adore each other.
Wrong way. Go back.
In Western Australia we have big signs wherever roadworks are being done in case people go the wrong way. This can be useful, but it can also be a bit confusing.
It’s a little bit like that with blogging because you get really curious to go down a certain blog path, you like what you are reading/seeing, but you are also uncertain of where exactly you are and sometimes the historical context of where you are, in that person’s blog, takes quite a bit of time, quite a bit of deciphering.
With my own blog, Wings and things, it’s obviously the same experience for new readers or followers because, of course, the latest post is always the most recent and, unless people have time to go back, they might not ‘get it’ that there are two different-but-same stories running parallel. The Love story is about the past but everything else is about the present.
As many of you already know, my husband has chronic Parkinson’s disease and terminal prostate cancer and is now in a nursing lodge close by. Our 18-year-old son recently had major spinal surgery. And me – I love birds!
I can’t keep up with the many blogs I am interested in, no matter how hard I try, but one thing I like to do is to go back and read the very beginnings of those blogs which is what I hope people will do with mine. It’s not that there is a wrong or a right way necessarily, but going back can be fantastic!
Oh yeah, and if you go back, you will find that I don’t usually do 4 posts in the day. I cheated today with the pics – hehe!
An over-abundance of masculinity
I just figured out why there is suddenly so much squabbling amongst our birds; there are too many males! I decided to do a count today and here are the statistics:
- four roosters (no hens);
- one golden pheasant (no females);
- ten peacocks (five peahens);
- two drakes (two ducks);
- five ganders (two geese);
- one emu (two emuettes);
- two turkey toms (one female); and
- one weiro.
The fact that we also have two male alpacas and two male dogs means that, if you include Son and me in the equation, and not counting the twelve gender-defying guinnea fowl, we roughly have a ratio of 3 to 1 in favour of the male presence here. It is definitely time to get some more hens!
I figure if there is more of a female presence here, Godfrey will stop trying to lord it over me!
Note: We did have a lot of hens but the fox got them so now I have a better yard, with higher fences. I hope this works!
Unhatched eggs
Well, it looks like little Tapper isn’t cut out to be a mother yet after all because, after weeks and weeks of sitting on those eggs, she has given up. She did try!
Bubble, the female turkey Tapper was brought up with (there is also a male Bubble), is absolutely delighted to have her best friend back out and about. They are very close as you can see.
Tapper: Motherhood isn’t everything, Bubs!
Bubble: Oh, okay, Taps.
Fighting fugdom on Friday
Zaruma is in a fug because the turkeys keep bullying him. Some evenings I have to actually pick him up and put him in the yard for the night. One of his feet is a little damaged from the latest battle with Baby Turkey so I contemplated bringing him into the back veranda to convalesce with Doc (who has kind of rallied – vet tomorrow, Husband and you guys suggest) until Son gave me ‘the look’. ‘The look’ is an expression of incredulity and shock and it is very effective. Needless to say, Doc is in the back verandah and Zaruma is out in the yard, but Son has put the turkeys in with Daffy and Dotty, the Indian Runner ducks, in the adjacent yard. It’s not as complicated as it sounds.
The definition of being ‘in a fug’ is when:
1. you don’t collect the mail from the post office for a week and then you leave it in the car for another week and then you bring it into the house and put it aside unopened for another week because it looks a bit billy
2. the tiniest of tasks seems insurmountable so that it seems a long way down to your feet to put your socks on
3. your mind does 50 laps while your body just hangs around drinking banana milkshakes
4. tomorrow becomes your favourite word
5. you forget to buy your grade 2 kid the left-handed scissors he needs for art class
The first time I was hit badly by fugdom was due to the last thing on the above list. My failure to remember the scissors for the third week in a row compelled Son’s teacher to ask me rather pleadingly to provide them and, mortified, I raced into town and bought the scissors and returned to the school and gave them to the teacher with my face squashed into a pretend smile. Then, driving home, I sobbed so hard about those scissors that I could hardly breathe.
The fugdom is back with a vengeance and there are many logical reasons for this, like anxiety about Husband, about Doc and Zaruma, about Son, who seems to have absorbed some of the fug, but there is also something illogical about it because of the hugely joyful balloon at the bottom of my stomach, waiting patiently.
So tomorrow – yes, tomorrow, Friday – I am going to take all of the mail into the nursing lodge and deal with it in the company of Husband’s moral support and I will not write another post until it is done – that’s my Friday challenge – hehe!
And hopefully, tomorrow, Zaruma will be back to normal!
I should have kept my mouth shut!
Well, it’s drizzling rain and I have the flu, so I rather miserably went outside to let the gang out of their pens later than usual this morning and, almost immediately, all these fights broke out. Seli (one of the ganders) was attacking Baby Turkey; Tapper (duck) had left her nest of unhatched eggs to give one of the Bubbles (turkey) a huge bite on the bum; and then the other Bubble and Zaruma (Tapper’s ‘husband’) started fighting viciously- really viciously. I had seen them do this before but this was really horrible so I kept trying to break them up and then all of a sudden, as I was yelling “Stop it!” they both ended up in the slimy green pool at the centre of the yard and, because I was so close and yelling, my mouth and nostrils were immediately filled with the goop of their splash and a wave of it speckled me from head to toe.
This is the embattled Zaruma who is usually bright white with orange legs and feet, so all of the black stuff on him is the same as what catapulted into my mouth! I have used half a tube of toothpaste; next time there is an incident, I will definitely keep my mouth shut!
jmgoyder 