MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL

I do hope that you enjoyed last month’s column. You might find the stories tend to jump from one thing to another like a sheep, but over time you will get a general idea of where this column tends to head.

Like the other ruminants around my place I have tried to introduce Dumb and Dumber (the Alpacas) to the occasional household diet of apples, pears and carrots, but they seem totally disinterested in things sweet. Not even sugar cubes tempt them. They seem to be particularly picky about their dinner and won’t eat anything they can’t recognise. Sensible I suppose.

Whenever I can get fruit or vegetables bulk and cheap it’s added to their diet. In this time of drought it has certainly helped them to keep condition. I have even tried Bananas on the sheep but they didn’t really work out. The sheep ate the skin but the flesh dribbled out of their mouths like an icing gun gone mad.

However something deters some of them from eating the food I present to them. I think its Maxine’s habit of personalising everything by dribbling on it and subsequently ‘bags it’ for herself.

It was about this time that Billy (What an imaginative name for a male goat) arrived from Griffith. Having eaten out the front and backyard of his foster home it was thought he could spend a bit of time eating out the weeds around my place. I have subsequently found out that even though goats have a preference for weeds he will not eat anything like it here. I might lay the blame here on his owner who regularly bribed it with Packet Cereals, Jelly Beans and Chocolate Buttons. After that a weed must taste obnoxious.



I think I will need some more fencing before reforesting the property. As I sit here contemplating the view I get out a ruler to discover that every tree, regardless of its age, has its leaves no lower than 110cm from ground level. Whilst this might enhance the military precision of my forest it indicates nothing under 110cm could possibly survive my little pets.

At a recent Clearance Sale I bought a Metal Mirror for $2. I had at least three reasons for this considerable investment. One to find out if Maxine had any sense of self, i.e. she recognised herself, secondly she might frighten herself and keep her from wandering into the house, and because it’s mounted at floor level an additional bonus of checking the situation with my trousers whenever I enter through that door.

The first time Maxine saw it, she just looked at it. She didn’t move, bleat, or approach it. I know she saw her reflection but her brain didn’t even recognise it was a sheep. She stood there for a while doing her Mae West impressions and then decided the bread in my hand was significantly more important and now she ignores it totally.

Billy also looked into the mirror. Having superior intelligence to any other animal roaming the place including myself, he immediately ripped into the mirror with three or four of the most vicious head butts his little legs and concrete scone could muster up.

So reason number one proved that Maxine is certainly no Einstein. Reason two demonstrated that Billy will stand up for himself against any intruder as ugly as himself.

‘Mirror mirror on the wall who has got the meanest head butts of them all’

For goats at least mirrors are a little different to reality however. I have also noticed that Billy chases Maxine but runs away from Mary, I think it’s a pecking order thing even though they are in different pecking systems. i.e. Goats as opposed to sheep. It’s quite easy to sink into complacency and begin to believe that my pets have some sort of intelligence.

Oh. Yes! Reason three showed that on at least two occasions, after coming back from the pub, my office door was well and truly open.

GODFREY ZONE
(For previous stories and to work out how we got to this point check out http://ahsole.blogspot.com/)

WAFFLE THEN OFFAL

Maybe I should introduce myself first. I’m a retiree looking desperately for a life that decided on a tree-change and moved from the village of Sydney to the village of Linton. That’s right I’m not just a Blow-in but I’m a City-slicker as well. What makes it even worse is that I migrated from New South Wales.

But that part of the story has already been covered in another publication so I don’t know whether I should drag up all that rubbish again. If I have a loyal reader then you will have noticed the move and continue to read the column.

So here’s my story, I hope you like it. If not I have seen this column on the bottom of bird cages before so I shan’t be offended.




Never under-estimate the intelligence of sheep. They startle at the hop of a cricket and follow each other around like Lemmings but they have a rudimentary brain that immediately recognises that if it’s food you run towards it and if its shears you run away from it.

Only slightly larger than a squash ball, and once great for an old-fashioned meal (This might be one for the Pub Menu) the brain of a sheep actually can work things out. I discovered this with Maxine the hard way. Every time I tried to feed the Alpacas she would muscle her way in front of them and tuck into their rations.

I tried chasing her off to leave Dali and Panchun (a.k.a Dumb and Dumber) in peace only to find she would circle the yard with me chasing after her and re-enter the yard through the gate and straight back to their feed. Shut the gate? She wriggles under it. Hang the bucket up a Metre or so? She rears up on her hind legs and bumps the feed out with her nose. Try chasing her with a stick? Useless. A Shepherds crook? Failed. I looked more like a jogging Bishop huffing and puffing in circles? I swear that sheep have a sense of humour.

Even solid constructions like buildings have not seemed to phase her at all. She has worked out how to get her head, but not yet her rump, into the feed shed when I lock myself in there to load up the feed bucket. In fact I even think she has worked out how to open the bag too. I would expect that other ‘Shepherds’ have the same problem. How to get a sheep’s head out of a bucket short of bludgeoning them to death and converting them into Mutton Vindaloo.

I take my life in my hands every day to feed the animal family. I begin to wander whether I shouldn’t invest in one of those foam ‘Sumo Wrestling Suits’ to wear at feeding time. Then I worry that I might look too much like them.

Even Butch and Betty the twin lambs have learnt how to bully the others. Not even Mary their Mother can control them anymore. They have lost all respect for their elders, its ‘me me me’ all the time, they stay up late and wander the paddocks all bloody night, they’ve formed a gang ‘the hole in the fence mob’ with the four lambs next door, and they have begun to graffiti the front lawn with poo.

While Betty is happy with the magazine ‘Cleo’, Butch insists that I take out a subscription for him with ‘Ram Ram Thank You Ma’am’ the soft porn magazine.

I don’t know what’s coming next, maybe binge drinking. At what age does ‘puberty’ finish with lambs? Now when I mention that word sex comes back into the story.

It was only last week that I began to wander if some of my sheep, affectionately referred to as ‘Castrati’, having supposedly become neuter gender and thus disinterested in things romantic, are showing signs of courting towards Maxine.

The bleating when she wanders off, the little rubbings along her side, the little nuzzles under her tail, the foot stomping in front of her. They are not going head down to charge towards her concrete noggin they’re showing a preference to playing piggy-back. I know that nothing is going to come of it so I suppose I should just avert my eyes whenever it happens and let them get on with enjoying themselves.

GODFREY ZONE