The Habit – Here, and Back Again

The Ginger Yo-yo is in full rebound – Thug (The Purring Death) is visiting us with the sort of determined persistence that defies belief. Just at present, he drops by at least every two or three days and we now have a morning routine where I open the back door, look out and then report to my partner whether or not it's a ‘Thug Day’.

I'll just have two fingers

As I have mentioned before, Thug is adoring and adorable, and if that were the whole story he would be welcome to stay as long as he wants. However, what really happens is that he turns up, tells us what a poor, deprived moggy he is, tries to cadge breakfast, demands extensive attention and then terrorises the other cats.

We have recently had Ginge refuse to come near the house for several weeks after a bad encounter by the back door, and just yesterday Oatmeal got rolled in the mud. Piper knows better - first hint of Thug and he takes cover. Even if he mistakes Ginge for Thug – it’s better to be embarrassed (again) rather than bitten on the arse (again).

Fast Food - some meal options are slow enough to catch
(Piper, after a recent encounter and trip to the vet)

So, Thug turns up and menaces the other cats; in return, I drive him home. You would think that sort of rejection (with small meal option, because a tiny amount of bait is needed) would put him off, but a day or two later he’s back again. Sometimes sooner. Much sooner. The highlight of the sequence has to be a night-time visit, around ten, when I drove him back down the hill. The following morning, he was hanging around by the back door, looking for breakfast – very wisely, all possible meal options were keeping their ears down elsewhere. So, I drove him home... and then, that evening, I drove him home again.

That is the big and consistent theme with Thug visits – again. So much again that it ought to be in capitals and tattooed on his whiskers.

Thug has got into a habit of visiting, a persistent habit that refuses to die. From chatting with his owners we have even identified one occasion when he dropped by in the evening, dodged being picked up and driven home, then walked home anyway for a meal, and then walked back to be with us the following morning. If Thug took up smoking, there would be a towering snow-drift of cigarette butts with a contented ginger cat snoozing on top.

His visits are such frequent events now that he has grown accustomed to the taxi-ride and will follow me all the way round the house and down to our van. We no longer have the frantic struggle, or the sudden mad dash, none of the usual panic of the pet-cage response. Being bundled up and driven home is just a part of the routine – he still doesn’t approve of the ‘taken home’ aspect, but is prepared to tolerate something that includes those essential elements in his life, food and cuddles.

His owners have tried variations on what time they let him out, or let him in – Thug is a great one for wailing outside the window at five in the morning because he’s hungry, or it’s time for his next cuddle treatment. They have tried multiple variations on when to keep him in, when to let him out, looking for that sweet-spot combination where he stays down with them. It doesn’t matter what they do, he still comes to see us. Today (so that’s two days in a row) he arrived mid-morning. My partner met him as she was feeding the sheep and he strolled back to the house with her, in search of the usual light snack and personal attention. I drove him home, because it gives our cats peace and quiet, and makes rolling in the mud their choice, rather than Thug’s.

For Thug it is not a matter of whether the journey or the destination is more important, just that there is food and love when he arrives. Or at least other cats to snack on.

Now, Christmas is coming. The season of good will to all ginger moggies, the time when Thug tried to move in with us last year, because it was too wild and noisy at home with friends, family and their dogs visiting. In this season of giving, I currently make a routine check under the trees (Christmas or not) for the presence of the ginger gift of love and feline violence that just keeps giving.

Remember, a cat is not just for Christmas, except perhaps for Thug, who is more prepared to go home in January.

A Jump To The Left

Some time back, I wrote about two of our rams (TwoMega-Nits of Ram) getting their horns entangled like one of those party puzzles. Back then, the first pass at fixing it was after dark after a five hour drive. Funny how the same things come round.

Butch as a youngster, with his mother - 

This time I there was no long car drive, just a busy day mixing concrete and building a flight of steps. Come evening, my partner went out to feed the sheep and I decided to take a shower. Usually, I wouldn’t step into the shower until sheep-feeding is done, just in case there’s a head stuck through a fence, or one of the regular troublemakers is in the wrong field. This time, I went for the shower anyway, because it’s so long since anything actually went wrong, and because I really, really needed to spend some time under a relaxing spray of hot water.

Butch (top right) as a teenager. hanging around with his mates, Panda and Monk

At least I was out of the shower by the time my partner called from the back door.

Butch hasn’t turned up for food.

That’s sort-of unusual. Butch is our oldest ram (his half brother Monk is several days younger) and really likes his food. However, since his fall from the exalted rank of Alpha Male (Because when you’ve reached the top, there’s only down left... ), everybody tries to beat him up, including one of the wethers. Worse still, he’s only got one horn intact – the right side broke a while back so there is only a stump. Despite being a foodie, Butch can be put off coming to the gate when the evening feed is being put out. And at that time of evening, with the light almost gone, spotting a mid-brown ram amongst the shadows across a couple of acres of field can be difficult.

I pottered around the house, finding clothes, whilst my partner went to finish dealing with the rest of the sheep. After all, Butch might still turn up...

Or not.

Quarter of an hour later we set out with a lantern to search the field where the rams spend the winter. It is our largest open field – no gorse bushes in the middle – but it slopes and undulates, creating a number of shallow dips where a ram might hide. It also has a corner where the fence has been heavily reinforced following an escape attempt some years back, so we started there.

Butch. keeping his right side to the fence

Good choice. That saved us a lot of tramping around in the dark. Butch was not actually in the corner but a short distance out, huddled against the stock netting. Whilst his right horn is largely gone, he still has the full corkscrew on the left and what he did was...

Actually, I have no idea what he did. I suspect it started with a jump to the left, but somehow he had threaded that corkscrew horn into the fencing. Given his age and weight, I really can’t imagine that he turned a couple of somersaults to do the job, but it was quickly obvious that just moving him backwards and forwards was not going to unscrew him.

There was only one thing to do – pick him up, turn him on his back, and just keep rotating until he came free. That sounds simple, but Butch probably weighs somewhere in the region of twenty-five to thirty kilos (small by modern commercial sheep standards, but still about the same as a sack of coal), has no convenient hand-holds, and really, really hates being picked up, let alone turned upside-down. He has various ways to express his displeasure, but once I had him toes-skyward he went for the kick and flail option. So, to recap – pick up twenty-five kilos of uncooperative sheep, turn him over, take great care to not break his neck, nor get kicked in the face, and then untwist his horn from the fence. No, wait, I left out a few details – do this in the dark (OK, there was a lantern, but it doesn’t matter where that is, the glare gets in my eyes), without injuring myself, and in clothes fresh out of the cupboard. With the other rams gathering round. That’s it. Simple.

A ram, twisted into a fence, in a mood – a whole new meaning to cross threaded. I can also tell you from close, personal experience, that a sheep hoof does not fit inside a human nostril, and that it really stings when a grumpy ram tries to disprove that idea. I can also tell you that it doesn’t matter which hoof. At the time, I said forceful things that might be paraphrased as ow, that hurt you pesky little rascal.

When it was done, there was only one more thing to say.

I need another shower.

Chicken In Distress

Keeping chickens brings all manner of challenges, but since ours free-range over an acre or more, a major one is trying to keep them safe from predators. It turns out that there is no shortage of things eager to kill and eat our birds – foxes, weasels, the neighbour's dog, me when they are particularly annoying – as well as random hazards such as passing cars.

They actually have up to eighteen acres to roam across, but somewhere in those little chicken brains, there appears to be an understanding that the likelihood of predators increases the further they roam from the house. We have even observed that birds who witness one of their own being mown down by a passing motorist are more cautious about crossing the road. (Why did the chicken cross the road? Because they are too dumb to know it’s dangerous.)

Nobody here but us chickens

Amazingly, the biggest single obstacle to chicken safety turns out to be... chickens. They make a wide range of noises to express alarm, but rarely when there’s actually something to be alarmed about. So far as I can tell, on seeing one of their number taken by a fox, one chicken response is not to scream loudly it’s a fox, it’s a fox, but to carry on with whatever they were doing, secure in the knowledge that foxy has already eaten. A second response is to fly up high and look down to check there’s a potentially sacrificial hen closer to the ground.

On those occasions when we are on high alert and doing some defensive bird-watching, because there’s been a fox around, we keep an ear out for sounds of distress. At the first sound of trouble, grab the big stick and go running to save some poor hen from being fox-snack.

Right. That works so well.

Let me give a few examples of causes of sounds of distress. The dialogue is a rough translation from hen to human; my responses are rarely spoken aloud...

Hen: He jumped on me, the brute, and pinned me to the ground, so I screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

Me: Yes, dear, he’s a cockerel, you’re a hen, that’s how it works.

Hen: I laid an egg. How did that happen? Hell’s teeth, that thing came out my arse. Anyway, I screamed, and screamed, and screamed... what do I do now?

Me: Yes, dear, you’re a hen, that’s how it works. Now sit on it. Or give it here and I’ll have it for supper.

Hen: She pecked me, the bitch, so I screamed....

Me: Yes, dear, that’s how it works. She’s a bigger, meaner hen than you, higher in the social order of hens, who has to remind you of your place.

Hen: OMG, I flapped my wings and my feet came off the ground. I think I’m afraid of heights, so I screamed...

Me: Seriously?

Hen: Help, help, help... I just opened my eyes and I’m a chicken... and I’m surrounded by chickens... it’s enough to make me scream... HELP! I just shut my eyes and when I opened them...

Frankly, some hens can scream in panic over almost any routine part of being a hen, and with chicken-on-chicken violence being a regular event, moments of absolute peace are suspicious. Thus we have a system for handling false alarms where you have to listen for the quiet sound of almost nothing happening before rushing out to chase off a predator. Or we can give way to frustration and have chicken for dinner...

That’s the choice with the sounds of a chicken in distress – a source of angst, or a piquant sauce and some vegetables on the side.

Am I There Yet?

I don’t often write about writing, but when an interesting detail smacks me between the eyes, I have to write it down. Last time, it was Head Elsewhere, my regular disconnect with the real world. This time it’s almost the inverse, achieving the necessary connection with my unreal world.

I’ve been writing a novel on Wattpad (Digital Tart), fixing it chapter by chapter, each instalment getting the eyeball from my partner before it goes online. So, comments come back, this word isn’t right, didn’t follow what was happening here, please spellcheck the ******* thing. The usual.

I then go through to see what needs fixing, and what doesn’t. One particular passage didn’t really work for either of us, but I patched it up, and all was well. Or not. Yes, it was better, but no, it wasn’t right, and I really couldn’t see why not. It was sufficiently wrong that as I cleaned out the goose hut tonight, my head did a long excursion elsewhere, watching the offending scene play over and over.

By the time the floor was washed and swept, the geese fed, and everything settled down for the night, I knew what was wrong and how to fix it. In fact, if it weren’t for the chickens, I would be writing those fixes now. However, once the geese were done, it was time to put the chickens to bed, so my head went to another elsewhere.

An elsewhere of an elsewhere – cleaning out the chickens whilst thinking about thinking about the writing whilst cleaning the geese... you get the picture? I went back over the goose-cleaning operation, a bit of internal theatre, a personal flashback re-watching myself cleaning the geese whilst being head-elsewhere over the troublesome scene. Once I started looking closely – and the rewind/slo-mo playback of myself in my own head is superb – I saw the real problem. Not the fix for the scene, but why I didn’t get it right the first time, or the second. Until I cleaned out the geese, I really wasn’t there yet.

Welcome to my head. Feel free to look around a while. Just don’t touch anything.

The scene itself was simple enough – two characters who aren’t sure of each other, perhaps don’t like each other, and are about to step into a situation where trust, or the lack of it, is troublesome. I had the scene, the actions, the dialogue... but it wasn’t right, because I wasn’t there. I was standing back, doing a bit of arm waving, you stand there, you go there, now say this, do that... cut... lovely work people...

Except it wasn’t. Until I did the geese and took the time to be really there. To stop the action for a moment and ask the sarky character so what’s your problem anyway? And then the other one – why is this winding you up? And then nudge the mannequins aside and step into their shoes (or armoured boots) and really be there, take a look around, see what my characters were seeing, feel the hob-nails on the concrete.

That sarcasm isn’t just a moment of snarkiness, it’s a childhood of dodging the jackboots, of caring for family in a tight corner, protecting an innocent victim of those jackboots. And from the jackboot side, that sarcasm is a breath away from the other character being the ring-leader of a round of mob violence, it’s a warning to look up to check for incoming bricks, the moment to lock shoulders with the other jackboots... yada, yada, yada. The details don’t really matter, only the being there is important.

The fix, when I get a chance to write it, is probably a sentence or two. Maybe less if I can figure out how to be clever about it, but that’s not the point. Until I was there, it didn’t work, didn’t happen, failed to come together. Until I’m there, in the middle of everything, feeling it, being it, no matter how unreal it might be, the writing doesn’t work.

I’ve never been at the front of a riot, never been front and centre behind the riot shields, but if I can’t let my head go elsewhere (perhaps pick up few useful recollections from the shelves), and be there, I make a mess of the writing. What I have done is stood in the front rank as a pikeman in a civil war battle re-enactment, with the Roundhead army marching down on us from behind a hill. It’s only a bit of weekend fun. No-one is going to get hurt beyond the ability of the St John’s Ambulance folks to patch up. (OK, sometimes there’s a trip to A&E, or the burns unit, or the urgent need for an orthopaedic surgeon... but that’s rare.) It’s just a bit of fun... but the drums, the noise, the marching, the first sight of their pikes appearing over the crest of the hill, my there’s a **** of a lot of them... feel those butterflies anyway.

I can feel that brick in my hand, now. Just let me get a proper grip on the riot shield... hey, mate, am I holding this right? Never done this before, never want to do this for real, so just let me be a moment to soak it in, find some words to go with it.

I’m back now. Until the next chapter. Or tomorrow evening when the geese need cleaning out again. Shit happens, my head goes elsewhere, and just maybe, I’m there again.

A Brooding Look

One of our chickens went missing – it happens, for a number of reasons. So, they wander next door, decide the food, service or both is better and stay the night, and the following day the neighbour asks is this your chicken? Or, they wander too far, something with teeth and claws decides that the food looks good, the chicken stays for more than just the night, and the following day, the pile of feathers says that was tasty.

And then there is the third option – unbeknownst to us, a hen has been laying her eggs somewhere other than the nest boxes we provide. Then, having laid a good number, she disappears to go broody. This time, her name is Carnival.

Our missing bird taking a (dust) bath.

She disappeared two nights back, so cue the late-night walk around the field checking for sad heaps of feathers. I found nothing, and these days the neighbours send our occasional marauding hens home, so that left broody, or killed further away. Finding a white hen in the dark by lamplight sometimes works... Carnival is brown with stripes, and yellow patches - I gave up looking once the daylight went.

The following morning, I took a more extensive look, but still no sad pile of feathers, no she wasn’t at the neighbours, but she didn’t turn up for breakfast either, and in the past broody hens turn up for the morning grain.

At this point, we wrote Carnival off as a probable distant fatality but, around lunchtime, when we were talking through exactly which brown hen was missing, making sure that it really was Carnival (because she’s not the only one in brown and stripes) I pointed to a particular hen and said... isn’t that the missing one?

Yes. Carnival was back. Not broody at all, right? Wait, what’s that smell? What did I just tread in? We call it the broody turd. After twenty-four hours (approximately) of sitting on the eggs, a hen has a lot of well-fermented faeces stored up and looking for somewhere to go. Not only is the broody turd big, but it has reach and presence, a foul miasma that spreads and lingers. Maybe she is broody then.

So, decision time. Shut her in somewhere until she gets bored of being broody, or track her back to the nest. We’ve lost a few hens this year, and the lock her in routine is not easy to get right, so we opted to track Carnival.

Now, about this lunchtime business – it was a nice day, so we were going to eat out, lunch was already on the plates and ready to go when I spotted our missing hen. I took the first watch, whilst my partner ate, and then we swapped. Yes, we could both eat and watch, but a hen on the way back to her nest can be a nippy little devil. In the time you take to put lunch somewhere safe from all the other hens, she could be gone... And then it’s another twenty-four hours or so before the next opportunity.

So, what does a young bird do when she comes off the eggs? A dust-bath, obviously, a quick freshen up just after dropping that broody turd, and then a bite to eat. Hey, there’s an idiot human following me, how about some grain, mate? Then perhaps another dust bath, a leisurely stroll to fool anything trying to follow her back to the nest, maybe a bit of sun-bathing. Then another stroll... are we paying attention... how about a stroll around the corner box of the stables where the hens normally live. Still paying attention, are we?

She vanished. How hard can it be to watch a chicken? There one moment, gone the next. Somewhere in the vicinity of the stables...

By a process of elimination, we worked out where she is. Probably. There’s a whole run of out-buildings... those either side of the one the chickens use are piled high with stuff in storage. So, if she’s in one of those, we just have to take everything out...

So, we had a plan – watch and wait, and then follow our elusive broody once she comes out for lunch. We will watch carefully – we know where she vanishes, so those decoy strolls can be ignored... and then we will know which box.

The following day, with another round of really nice weather, I set an alarm on my phone to patrol the yard every twenty minutes. Carnival was a no-show at mid-day and eventually, we had lunch in one of those twenty minute gaps, certain that the moment we sat down she would appear, but not this time. In due course, on account of the weather, we had a decent serving of some home-made ice-cream, and as I stepped out of the house with that, there was Carnival.

She strung us along for nearly an hour and even then, we almost missed it. One moment she was pecking around and then, like something out of a Bond movie, she slipped into the shadows, and made a run for it, up on to the perch, up again onto a stack of boxes, and through a ridiculously tiny gap into the store next door.

This is where human guile outwits hen speed. I had all the doors with their bolts barely hanging on. We knew which way she went and got the adjacent door open just a crack to watch her go over all the stacked junk and narrow down the approximate nesting site.

And on the third day... as per the forecast, the weather turned grey and we spent a few hours carefully emptying the store, working back until a certain box that felt too heavy for its size...

In the egg-box

Carnival is now with her eggs in a nice, solid nest box, safe from the rats and other predators. The hole to next door is blocked. She will try to go back. They always do. It will take a few days before her head is re-programmed to recognise the nest box as hers.

The new home - are you sure those are mine?

In the meanwhile, we check on her from time to time. All is going well. She has that grim and brooding look... put those fingers in here and you won’t be getting them back. That’s how a broody hen is supposed to be.

The Cat Fight At The End Of The Universe

I was woken by the wailing of the cat fight at the end of the universe. From the volume and extra-added screaming, I assumed that Thug (aka The Purring Death) had Piper cornered somewhere, so I went to help. The further through the house I went, the louder it got. Not so much cat fight at the end of the universe, but the cat fight that ends the universe. Ginge had risen from her (well, Oatmeal’s) cushion in front of the washing machine and was dancing around, expressing her concern – make it stop, I want to go back to sleep.

I carried on to the lounge – it wasn’t Piper, but Squeak. I assumed Thug was on the other side, but I couldn’t see, couldn’t get the right angle at the window. (Note to self – on getting out of bed to investigate cat-fight, dress first.)

So there you have it, seven-thirty in the morning, end of the universe and I haven’t had breakfast yet, or got my underwear on. Ginge was right to be concerned. For some reason, Squeak really loathes ginger cats, and like Piper, she can spot a ginger cat by colour and doesn’t differentiate between Ginge and Thug. Whichever one she is putting in their place, the screaming and fury will just go on for ever. Or until the universe finally gives up and ends.

Squeak is utterly unrelenting. When she has a go at Ginge, it’s a relatively even match and Ginge resolves it by running away. In fact, these days, Ginge won’t even come in to the lounge. But Thug... that is a grudge match and a half. Squeak pitches her two-thousand eight-hundred grams of raw whining against his meagre seven kilos of lean mean violence machine. She howls and wails, lunging without a care for her personal safety and absolutely refuses to back down until he turns and runs. Or at least saunters away. Whatever the mode of locomotion, Squeak stays at it until he is absolutely out of sight. This is her window sill, and no damned ginger cat is getting it.

That is the cat fight at the end of the universe. OK, not quite the end. Just close enough to give a flavour. The true end of the universe would be if they were both the same side of the glass.

Thug, relaxing later on the new, luxury, body-hugging lap

Where’s My Wabbit?

At least two of our cats are active hunting cats and routinely bring back rodents. When stray or feral cats like that move in, the first hint that they really believe the house is their home is bringing back the catch to eat it. Piper reached that stage ages ago, so bringing his own supper in is just part of the routine and, somewhere about three this morning, he came in with the latest something. No telling what without turning on the light, but he does try to tell you all about it. All of our cats have more than one name, so Oatmeal is also Flumph, because when seven kilos of fat, fluffy cat walks across your chest in the middle of the night, there are noises ending in emphatic mph! Piper is also known as Chirples, because when he has something to say, he does it with a stream of chirpling meows, and he always has a lot to say. This is nothing like the wailing of wait for me if we’re walking too fast when he’s following us across the field.

Piper getting a better view on the rabbit situation

(Before you read on, I have to warn you, some animals were hurt in the making of this blog.)

So, middle of the night, a short hello chirple sequence is easy to interpret – I’m in, it is/is not heaving with rain, my paws are dry/dripping with mud, do you want to stroke me before I sleep on your feet? (Or, should you care to step out of bed, I can wrap my soggy self around your shins and then tickle you between the knees with a very cold, wet tail...) In the summer, the conversation starts some distance out, an ongoing chirpling heard through the open windows, fading as he works round to the cat-flap the other side of the house, and then building again as he comes through the house. There may, or may not, be a hiatus whilst he has a snack at the biscuit bowl.

Then there is the middle-of-the-night extended chirple. That can go on for a while, ideally until one of us gets out of bed, and it means just the same as the short sequence but with the vital extra – come see this fantastic mouse I caught. Piper does like his people to observe and admire the catch. That’s what woke me this morning. Chirple, chirple, chirple... thud.

The thud is not good – I had no idea what it meant, but it could not be good. After a few rounds, I started to believe that maybe it was Thug (aka The Purring Death) at the window, trying to burgle his way in and have a bite of Piper. That did not gel with Piper telling all about a fantastic mouse... so I turned on the lights and went to see what all the excitement was about.

It was a bit of a let-down. There was Piper, lying in the hall in that ready-for-action, half-curled pose... and no mouse. But he was watching the gap under a bookshelf so no visible mouse, but a potential rotting corpse... unless it was dumb enough to come out and make a run for it.

Now it was my turn to talk. Do you want me to move the furniture? Are you going to catch the damn thing if I get it out? Can I just go back to bed and deal with this in the morning? What was that thud? The thing is, once Piper has told you all about it, achieved lights-on, and attention from one of his people, he’s done talking. You’re supposed to admire, congratulate, offer a scratch behind the ears, and then push off so that he can eat in peace. (And this is the moment to memorise the location for clean-up later.)

I went back to bed.

Chirple, chirple, chirple... thud. Seriously? How can I sleep through this? Chirple, chirple, chirple... thud. It still sounds like Thug trying to break in, but I know it’s Piper and a mouse going another couple of rounds. A serious mouse, putting up a fight... and in the red corner... no, wait... that’s just blood... Chirple, chirple, chirple... thud. Perhaps if I leave the light on, I can get some sleep. Chirple, chirple, chirple... thud. I mean, really... can’t you just keep the noise down? Chirple, chirple, chirple... crunch.

(This is the part where some animals get hurt...)

I’m not a religious chap, but there’s got to be something to give thanks to for that distinctive crunch. I know it’s horrible, but it’s also natural – it’s the sound of bones breaking, of mouse being eaten. A bit of a downer for the mouse, I’ll agree, but it means peace and quiet in a few minutes, it means no festering corpse under the book-shelf, and all I have to do is remember – tread carefully until the remains are located and disposed of (having taken note of where earlier...). If you want the truly horrible, it’s the cold squelch of mouse guts between the toes when you fail to note the location, or note and forget. (Call me callous if you must, but I’ve tried rescuing mice from the cats, and once you’ve been bitten a couple of times by the ungrateful little ****, leaving the cat to finish the job is the preferred option.)

I really wasn’t paying proper attention. That wasn’t a standard, middle-of-the-night extended chirple. That was the extended, Director’s cut of Chirple the Movie with all deleted scenes reinstated. With added thud. When I went to start breakfast I did remember, and went looking for the mouse remains. Instead, I found a rabbit trying to hide under the bookshelf. Of course, the gap wasn’t big enough, so rabbit could only get in up to its shoulder, back end still sticking out. Idiot rabbit.

I still wasn’t paying proper attention. I went to rescue the rabbit and found it wasn’t hiding, but resting, in pieces – mostly just the back end. Piper ate the rest. I should have worked it out at three in the morning. What goes chirple, chirple, chirple... thud? Piper playing with his food when it’s something a lot bigger than a mouse.

We have had several rabbits in the house – frisky little devils to hold on to and carry out across the field – but this one just went in the tub to go out to the compost heap. Job done. No rotting meat under the book-case.

No, not job done. Around about lunch time, Piper got up. Chirple, chirple, chirple... Chirple, chirple, chirple... poking around the house, checking out that book-case... As my partner said, Piper was obviously looking for his rabbit, so she retrieved it for him and put it out the back door.

Yes, Piper wanted his rabbit. No, he was not going out there with all those mean chickens hanging around. The final compromise was to put the rabbit just inside, on the door mat, where Piper ate it, growling at Oatmeal to make it clear exactly whose rabbit it was.

All he left was one foot, which somehow ended up in one of my shoes. Scrabble, scrabble, scrabble... thud. Oatmeal spent time tossing my shoe around the kitchen trying to get at the unlucky-rabbit foot.

So, I have learned my lessons. Firstly, the really extended chirple, and the thud, means come see, I caught something bigger than a mouse. Secondly, when Piper stuffs the remains of a rabbit under a bookshelf (because obviously it didn’t crawl there on its own) he expects it to be still there later. It doesn’t matter whether it’s me, or Oatmeal, rabbit thieves are totally unacceptable. And Piper has the will the voice to demand his rabbit back.

The one thing you can be sure of with Piper – he understands a party invitation that says BYOB. He always brings his own bunny.

PS

I check under the car before driving away, because the cats regard that nice dark space as a good hiding place. Driving out today, I really checked because Piper was dancing around, a good sign that he’s just chased Ginge under there. He was not going to follow her into a confined space because she is Mistress of the Educational Nose Swipe. I bent down, I glanced, I saw fur in the gloom and said Hello Ginge. I was wrong. When I started the engine to hint that it was time to go, a rabbit shot out from underneath and made a break for freedom up the hill, Piper in hot pursuit.

He returned about an hour later, no chirple, no bunny. Nice try, but no wabbit.

Bee Plus

Another sunny day – they’re rare enough that we notice – and sudden squawking from the chickens around mid-day caught my attention, so I went to see what the fuss was about. As I approached the house, I heard a hum and had one of those moments: I know that noise... no... can’t be...

A swarm of bees flew round the corner, over my head and up towards the old cowshed.

It is years since I last saw one, and that was back when we kept bees ourselves. We had just returned from an outing, and there, above the garage, was a scene from a disaster movie. Or maybe a horror movie if you’re spooked by a two-meter-plus tornado of a few thousand bees above your head. Our actual reaction went something like WTF...? Oh, it’s bees. OH! Its a swarm. Oh, wow! Can we follow them? Can we catch them?

Then they disappeared down the garden, so we gave chase... as far as one of our apple trees, where they gathered as a giant pear-drop, bigger than a football. That was pretty much perfect in terms of trying to catch them. As is always the way, we didn’t have the necessary equipment on hand, so I went back out to buy a few things, and my partner kept an eye on the swarm.

As it turned out, it was swarm weather. It took me a while to get the things we needed from the bee supplies place (operated out of someone’s garage) because there was a queue of bee-keepers from around the area, all dealing with swarms. I got home just in time to witness our giant pear-drop of bees (literally thousands of them, hanging peacefully in the tree) melt away like a blob of butter over a high heat and head off down the hill. We tried to track them, but lost sight after half a mile or so.

I followed yesterday’s swarm as best I could, but after a brief hover over the cowshed, I lost them. The only way to keep track was to head round the end of the barn, and by the time I had done that, they were gone. Or course, they may have settled in one of the buildings, so we shall keep an eye out. We’ve muttered for years about re-starting bee-keeping, so if we have just gained a swarm, maybe we will.

For now, we will keep an eye on the cowshed and barn to see if we have a hive establishing there. Just a daily test to see if we are bee-positive.

Is This A Green Welly I See Before Me?

Ages ago, I wrote about the Pursuit of Green Wellies, the way chicks and lambs quickly learn that the things wearing the green wellies come bearing food. Now it’s the turn of one of our older hens.

Black Lacy in her prime in 2010

Black Lacy - the name is essentially descriptive, a black hen with brown mottling on her wings that made her look like she was clothed in black lace when she was in her prime. Now it makes her look like a grubby old hen in need of a wash, but no judgements here: I’m a middle-aged bloke in need of a smaller waistline.

Black Lacy is not our oldest hen – that would be Chicky, who just keeps going – but Lacy is the one most seriously showing her age. Black Lacy moves slowly, she is incredibly light when you pick her up, and based on prior experience, she is going to drop off the perch some time this year. However, she seems perfectly content pottering around, relaxing in the sun when we have any, and laying the occasional egg when the mood takes her.

The other notable thing is that she is very nearly blind. One eye is completely useless, and there is no noticeable movement of the iris. The other clearly picks up something, but not enough to, say, stop her running into walls. To be fair, that was because all the other hens went chasing something, Black Lacy just got caught up in the moment and never saw the wall everyone else swerved past. My partner heard the impact as her beak hit the wall.

Black Lacy today - to be fair, the
light wasn't as good

The only thing she sees reliably are green wellies. Because her eyesight is so poor, there are certain rituals during the day. I start with lifting her down off the perch in the morning and putting down a pile of corn when all of the other hens have gone, otherwise she would get nothing. There is a similar routine in the evening – wait until everyone else is on the perch and then put down a pile of corn for Black Lacy.

She can’t see the corn, of course. Or not until it is literally right under her beak, or moving. When I trickle corn slowly out of my hand she tracks the movement – once she has found one end of the trail, she keeps following and pecking. Or gets it totally wrong and heads away from the food, but then it is easy to pick her up and start again.

Now I have a new routine, because I noticed her tracking my wellies. I don’t know if it is the colour, the size, or a dim memory from chickhood, but she recognises something about those big green boots and the first place she hunts for corn is right between the toe-caps. Unlike chicks, she doesn’t race towards green wellies, in fact she doesn’t race anywhere (except for the unfortunate incident with the wall) but she does recognise them.

That, or she can smell my feet through five millimetres of rubber. You never know with a chicken.

Whatever it is, our blind hen knows the significance of green wellies.

Noticing Noticing

Mornings have a simple routine, get up, check the animals, have breakfast, except for winter when breakfast happens first whilst we wait for daylight. That’s most mornings. Today was one of the specials where I needed to be somewhere, on time. That means add in getting showered, finding clothes with no significant animal debris on them, and packing in lots of extra jobs.

The clean clothes were already set out. All I had to do was shower, cook breakfast, get clothes off the rack beyond my partner’s desk, check weather forecast, nice legs, stroke cat...

Wait. Nice legs? Where did that come from?

Back up. Literally. It was something that caught my eye on the desk – a piece of junk mail waiting for the decision: recycle immediately, use as fire-lighter, use as litter-tray liner. In the semi dark, some unquiet corner of my mind that still remembers its testosterone-addled youth picked out a dim photo, and nice legs. It took some staring at the desk to put the pieces together.

The thing is, this was just a passing glance. All that background stuff in my head, at the subconscious level, picked out a particular detail – part of the activity we mostly don’t notice. The same stuff that gets your foot shifting to the brake before you can consciously paraphrase the Bard – is that a pedestrian I see before me? – or keeps your fingers out of the way of the knife so that supper remains the vegetarian option. We spend so much of our time not actually noticing all the stuff we notice, that it comes as a surprise when circumstances make us notice it.

The people who do the adverts in the junk mail know it too, even if they don’t know they know it. That picture, on close inspection, was an ordinary young couple walking down an ordinary street. When I pick it up and look at it now, my head doesn’t instantly say ‘hey, nice legs’, except as an echo of this morning’s surprise, instead it explores things like do we want another credit card? No. Or even is this paper too shiny for the litter tray? But somewhere, in the background, that bit of my mind is probably still chuntering – nice legs, see, told you so. So even though I don’t want the credit card, and surely wouldn’t be swayed by the nice legs, some bit of me noticed, and there’s no telling how insidiously it might be nagging the rest.

Hmmm... this reminds me, I must ask my partner if she’s noticed there’s some junk mail needs processing. Nice fire-lighter.

Strawberry Delight

Every solution brings a new problem. After our tricky lambing and bottle-feeding, we moved Rubitu and son into a pen in the greenhouse. Life is like that around here – lamb was undersized, probably a bit premature, shivering in the northerly wind and in need of somewhere warm. Greenhouse – obvious, yes?

Moving a lamb is easy – you pick it up. Getting the ewe to follow is as easy as the ewe chooses to make it. The technique is to carry the lamb so that she can see it whilst doing your best cry of mah, mah if the lamb refuses to call for mum.

As it turned out, getting them in was easy. Rubitu was cooperative, probably helped by the fact that we had spent the last couple of hours with both of them, in a confined space, trying to get lamb to suckle.

After two days of warm and safe, we reached the trade-off point between keeping lamb warm versus teaching lamb to follow mum. To complicate matter further, Rubitu wasn’t eating properly – yes the sheep nuts were very nice, but what she really wanted was fresh greenery. The odd large handful of dock leaves went down well, but we couldn’t spend all our time picking salad for her.

The morning of the big day felt a bit too cold, but shortly after lunch we decided it was finally warm enough. The plan was for a simple division of labour: my partner went to let Rubitu out and see if lamb would follow, I went to install some new cat-flaps as the rodent-suppression team need access to some more out-buildings.

The thing I really need to emphasise is that Rubitu and lamb were in the greenhouse, which is fenced off from the sheep to protect all those young plants being raised just outside the greenhouse. Sheep have no respect for the plants you care about. There is a hedge just inside the fence protecting the trees and we had to beef-up the fence to stop them reaching through and eating said hedge.

It turns out that Rubitu likes strawberries – not the fruit, but the plant. In fact she more than just likes them, but if she can’t have strawberry plants, well those young willow saplings look tasty. Are those raspberries at the back? Rubitu was in sheep gastro-heaven. So much to choose from, but she couldn’t eat a whole one, or at least not before my partner intervened and shooed her off.

It took two of us to get Rubitu and lamb out into the field, one to move the lamb, one to defend the plants. Junior now goes out during the day, but he has another few nights in the warm, so Rubitu has those brief few moments, morning and evening, to give the strawberries a good look, or perhaps a quick munch if we’re not paying attention.

A Wash With Trouble

A day with a long list of jobs is almost a guarantee of something going wrong. As a matter of practicality, I started with laundry, hanging out the wash whilst my partner went to feed the sheep. It’s been a nice, bright and sunny day with a crisp and bone-biting northerly wind so you stay awake to enjoy it. I was in the middle of juggling pegs when my partner shouted for help.

In the hour or so since I last checked, our final ewe for the season went from nothing to lambed. And in trouble. On a day with serious wind-chill.

Shove over, I'm older with more insurance - Cilla (foreground)
 making her bid for the lamb

Around about this time last year I wrote of our ageing ewe Cilla trying to take a new-born lamb from it’s mother, and here she was, at it again. With a side-order of Idris the gander being an aggressive nuisance. Last year I had to handle it on my own – it’s so much easier with two. We led the ewe into the barn, got her settled in and shut everyone else out. Job done. Crisis over. Back to hanging laundry and feeding sheep.

Not too long after, I went back to check. Soay are outstandingly self-sufficient, but things do sometimes go wrong. The lamb had found a gap and gone behind a barrier – easy enough to fix, so I settled him back with mum and headed off to tell my partner. Naturally, we drifted by for another look – basic precaution, and Soay lambs are outstandingly cute.

We only have a small number of sheep, and we’ve only been doing this for about ten years, but sometimes you look and you just know something is wrong, even if you don’t know what. It took a while to figure it out, but the lamb was not suckling, which is high on the list of terminal bad news for a new-born.

Here, right where I'm pointing

I stood him up and pointed his nose in the right direction. How hard can it be? Lambs have been finding the teat and sucking for thousands of years. Junior would suck on anything except the teat. So I stepped back and my partner took a go. Pick up lamb, guide nose, contact with teat... Seriously, it’s not us, it’s the lamb.

Imagine a multiple choice exam, Just to make it simple we’ve made every answer A. There you go, try your best. This lamb just keeps ticking D.

Feed me, sucker.
Let the dribble and drool commence.

There comes a point where this is truly life-threatening. My partner drove to our local farm supplies store to pick up a pack of commercial ‘colostrum’ substitute (the extra-rich initial milk the ewe produces to help jump-start the lamb). We already had some that we bought just in case, but now years out of date – our Soay rarely need this stuff. So rarely in fact that this is the first time in ten years.

So, lamb has had a few feeds. He keeps standing and heading for the udder, but it’s those last few millimeters where his nose veers away from the teat. Left a bit, right a bit, bang on, go for it... what’s this over here?

And now the final problem. We think he’s actually premature. After a lot of staring and muttering, we’ve narrowed down one of the things that bothered us at the start: his head is the wrong shape. It’s remarkably hard to explain. Think of an inflatable toy that just needs a few more puffs of air to push the nose out to where it belongs. We have seen this sort of deformity once before in a pair of lambs born to a ewe who was very ill, but at least hers got the hang of suckling promptly.

On the bright side, the laundry is drying. We’re going to need that later. Hand-feeding a lamb is a messy business.

PS

Just as I post this, junior appears to be suckling at last.