I thought this was a bird blog!
Well it was. It’s a blog that keeps misbehaving and deviating from its initial stance, which was cheer-upish!
So, let’s get back to the birds. The following is one of my favourite pictures of the peaceful peacocks trying to break up a fight between the pheasants.
Unfortunately their interventions didn’t work!
Jane, Anthony’s niece, took these photographs while the rest of us just watched the unexpected drama unfold. Yes, I have possibly posted these before and, no, Phoenix 2 has never come back.
‘Alas’ is rather a good word which resembles ‘aha!’
Anti-heroism and honesty
My post about Anthony coming home yesterday elicited a few encouraging comments for which I am appreciative, but also humbled, because I am not this hero I have somehow cast myself as, so I need to remedy that impression. No, I am much more the anti-hero, regardless of my good intentions. So this post is about honesty.
When Anthony comes home and wants to be the workaholic he once was, and draws attention to the things Son and I haven’t kept up with (lawns, garden, sweeping pathways, cleaning out the washhouse, washing the car), I become bitchy and resentful and say things like, “I’m doing my best. Why do you always have to find fault?” and sometimes I add a few expletives for good measure.
When Anthony comes home and can’t walk properly, I sometimes hurry him along and then (because he is heavy) thrust him into his armchair in a way that is not gentle and he says, “Why do you have to be so rough?” and I retort, “It’s the only way I can get you into the chair!” and he says, “Well, do you have to throw me?” and I snap, “Yes!” Sometimes we both then collapse into laughter so it’s okay, but sometimes we don’t.
When Anthony comes home and is in the armchair, asleep or semi-conscious, I sneak away and do other things because if he doesn’t want to watch Black Books or look at my blog or do anything except slump, I avoid him – yes I avoid him.
When Anthony comes home, I count the hours before I can take him back to the nursing lodge because he has somehow transmogrified into a job, rather than a person who I love and, even though this is difficult to admit, I love him more at a distance (both geographical and temporal). In other words, I love him the way he was and I find it difficult now to reconjure that.
He and I talk about these things which I realize probably seems strange, but he has always been my mentor, my confidante, my best friend so sometimes I tell him about how difficult he is as if he is another person, and he gives me advice.
“You will always be my hero,” I say, “but now Parkinson’s has got you.”
“I can get better,” he always says.
“No you can’t,” I say.
“But I love you,” he says.
And, just as I leave him at the nursing lodge, I say the words too – “I love you” – then I drive back home, sometimes teary, sometimes nostalgic, but always relieved, guiltily relieved to hand him over – my hero.
The picture below is of our two male golden pheasants who nearly fought to the death over a female and the one on the right, Phoenix 1, won the battle and now Phoenix 2 has been banished. I don’t know why, but it seems an appropriate picture for this post.
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!
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!”
Phoenix 1 (our golden pheasant) and King (our adult peacock) were perched together, but not together, in the avocado tree the other afternoon so here is a series of not-very-successful pictures of them. When I say ‘not-very-successful’, I mean that, despite my amazing photographic abilities (ha!) neither would look at me and pose properly. I will have to send them back to modelling school. Their contrasting colours are lovely though, and I will keep trying to get better photos of them now that they have developed this habit of hanging out together.
Oh, yeah, and who was it who said that “if at first…” thing?
“Idiot child!”
My maternal grandfather used to call me ‘idiot child’ when I was little. He said this fondly, so it was a term of endearment but I think he might have been right, because I have always been fantastically good at making a fool of myself. So I am still that idiot child despite a few decades having passed by.
But I am not so much of an idiot that I can’t read between the lines of how this blog has altered in tone from light-hearted and somewhat hopeful, and mostly about birds, last November, to what it is now. It is certainly much more about things than about wings. I worry that it is beginning to be tinged with a death theme and I know what that’s about.
Son has berated me for this morning’s ‘Doc’ post because he saw it on Facebook and he was enraged that (a) I had given up on Doc, and (b) I told the “world”.
My mother says she couldn’t do a blog because she wouldn’t want to “bare her soul” which means I must seem like I am baring mine – how ghastly!
One of my best friends says, in a gobsmacked way, “I’m ringing to see if you are okay because I just read your post.” He was referring to one from some time ago in which I was bereft and he said, “You always have been so transparent with your emotions.”
Needless to say, these comments make me feel like an idiot – ha!
This afternoon, I went to visit Husband in the nursing lodge and it was great. We walked up to the corner of the lodge property and discovered yet another ocean view, some other friends came and we ended up in Husband’s room, having a few laughs and reminiscing and then Husband began to falter and I needed to go home to see what was happening with Doc (I had left Son in charge).
Tomorrow Husband wants to come home for the day to help us make the Doc decision, so that is a good thing. As I was leaving, I said to him “Do you think I am an idiot?”
Without hesitation, Husband replied, “No, you’re just Jules.” And his acceptance is, and always has been, my warmest blanket.
But, speaking of idiocy, it wasn’t until I looked at a blurred picture I took of Phoenix 1 the other day that I realized the avocadoes were ripening – can you see them?
If you can’t see them, you are an idiot!
Golden pheasants
Since there was so much interest in our golden pheasant, Phoenix 1, yesterday, I thought I’d re-post a couple of pictures of the day Phoenix 1 banished his brother, Phoenix 2. They had a terrible fight over the one remaining female pheasant and Phoenix 2 now lives with neighbours because, each time he returns, Phoenix 1 attacks him again despite the fact that the female is long gone.
I was never able to take a picture of the female pheasants. One was killed by our dogs when she accidentally flew into their pen and the other one disappeared mysteriously. But here is a photo I found online at http://www.gamebird.com/Goldens323x250.jpg
As you can see, the female has a different kind of beauty from the male. In this photo you can also see why the males continually get into wrangles with each other if there aren’t enough females. I am beginning to wonder if our second female pheasant simply flew away to escape all the attention!
Anyway, here is Phoenix 1 again and in this photo you can see the length of his tail feathers. He had lost them all in his battle with Phoenix 2 but they are all grown back now which is perhaps why he loves looking at his reflection in the back veranda windows so much!
Phoenix rising
Phoenix 1, our only remaining golden pheasant (see first posts for that story), is finally, finally, coming to terms with his ‘only’ status and is my new best friend. Lately he has been coming closer and closer to me at the back doorstep and he seems a lot happier now that he is interacting with the other bird breeds.
I am searching for a female pheasant to keep him company but they are not easy to find.
He isn’t quite as obsessed with his own reflection in the window as he used to be, but he still likes to have a quick glance now and then. Well, you can’t blame him, can you – he is absolutely beautiful and he knows it!
Hints of harmony
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!
jmgoyder 
