Illness sucks
It is now nearly a week since I succumbed to this horrid gastric attack and, knowing I am hopefully on the road to recovery, this misadventure has given me pause. Having embraced friendships with people who are chronically (sometimes terminally) ill, my relatively short experience of awful pain, nausea etc. makes me wonder with wonder at how they remain positive, on top, giving. There are too many of you to name but I’m sure you know who you are.
When I am ill, I am a total wimp, I cringe in fear, I whimper – I am pathetic.
I may not be able to blog for a little while but, rather than send me well wishes, please use the comments button to draw attention to you own blog. I hope that’s okay.
Gutsy9 update in the form of a haiku
Atop my shoulder
This beautiful little friend
My teenage peacock
[Many thanks to Samantha for this photo of G9 yesterday].
Let me in!
Gutsy9 (the 5-month-old peachick I raised inside the house because none of our peahens were interested) is thriving outside now. He sleeps in a pen with the ducks, Zaruma and Tapper, but every morning I find him in the adjacent pen with the turkeys, Bubble and Baby Turkey! Oh well at least he doesn’t venture into the geese pen because Godfrey hates him.
As soon as I open the three pens to let them all free-range for the day, I am met with a cacophony of excited noises and then G9 actually sprints after me to the house and follows me inside.
Until today. Today I decided to say no to him, and tried to explain that his peacock poop is the reason. He wasn’t happy!
Oh and G9 is definitely a boy because our friend, Mike, who raises peas told me so. I’m not as thrilled as Anthony was when Ming was born and he yelled IT’S A BOY!
Secretly I was hoping for a little peahen – ha!
Baby birds
Gutsy9 isn’t quite sure about my mother’s weird canary, Andre, who I am babysitting while she is in hospital. Five months ago they were the same size!
Nose-blowing noise attracts nosy peacocks
Lately the peacocks have begun congregating outside my office and staring curiously at me through the flyscreen door. They’ve never done this before. They used to come to the back veranda door in the hope of bread but I stopped doing that ages ago when their poop began to replace the pavement.
Today I realized that their staring-at-me-through-the flyscreen-door-behaviour was due to my hayfever and the noise I make when I blow my nose. It almost exactly resembles their loud hoot-honking noise. They must think I’m calling them! Of course Gutsy9 is the first one to come running.
Gutsy9’s growth
G9 is now too big to be taken by a crow, fast enough to avoid the pecks of the pecking order, and can fly up to the height of a picnic table or low branch. His wonky leg is almost normal and he no longer walks with a limp. He sleeps happily all night with the ducks, Zaruma and Tapper, spends a few hours on my lap during the day and is nearly old enough to free range around the farm with the others. My biggest worry is he will fall into the pond and not be able to get out but yesterday he actually did fall in and flew out quite easily.
But guess what? I think he might be a she! The reason is that all of the adult males have a spur on each leg whereas the females don’t, and neither does G9.
Peekaboo!
Gutsy9 has now been living outside for 16 days. To begin with, he was sleeping in a big cage within a pen, but he has now graduated to sleeping outside the cage because he is tall enough to drink from the water container without the risk of drowning.
Zaruma and Tapper (married Muscovy ducks) have taken a liking to him so I put them in the same pen as G9 for the night, with the geese and turkeys in a separate pen.
When I go out to the pens in the morning to let them all out for the day, all the birds go crazy with delight but G9 literally jumps for joy to see me and sometimes twirls himself around in a little happy dance before following me across the lawn and into the back veranda of the house.
He followed me into the bathroom today, asking for a cuddle!
Deformed
Gutsy9 began to limp quite badly a couple of days ago, so yesterday Ming and I took him to the vet who confirmed that this is simply due to the deformity of his right leg. To my great relief this has nothing to do with me injuring one of his toes when he ran under my office chair way back.
I went back through my photos of him and I can see now that it was always deformed. He always stretched this leg out strangely. It’s okay though because he can now fly up to the height of a table and he is not in any pain.
G9 is now spending most of the day in the chookpen and all night in the big cage within the chookpen, but he also has an afternoon nap inside the house, either on my lap or nuzzling into my shoulder.
What a bird!
jmgoyder 