It might just be me slowly sinking into what used to be called senile dementia. I’ve been having a few bad experiences lately trying to keep up with the increasingly strange experiences with my farm animals. Who was it that first said ‘It’s either me or them’
As I write this it is a beautiful, crisp Victorian country winter having survived the frost and pea soup fog of the morning the sun is out and the birds have stopped shivering. I dread the early hours for it is then that Maxine or one of the other critters will meander up to the front door just to say hello or send me some cryptic message. I’m never sure when I’m half awake whether it’s the fog of my failing eyes or my petrifying brain from which they emerge.
One morning last week I was greeted by Maxine wearing a pair of my Y-fronts over her nose and mouth with the leg holes tucked behind her ears. Where she found them is beyond my reckoning but there she was fully protected I assumed against Swine Flu. I’d had a bit of an inkling that something was going on when she constantly decimated any hay bales I left laying around leaving herself huffing and puffing in the process. But she is a very experienced hypochondriac. Through the Bird Flee outbreak even the battalions of local Cockatoo’s, as gregarious as they can be, dared to land anywhere near her.
I remembered reading to them about the Three Little Pigs for it is just now that I’ve seen Maxine searching all the corners of the property probably in search of a little house made of sticks to check out if the occupants are running a fever or not. She has yet to realise there is a pile of bricks behind the shed.
A neighbour did warn me about reading them bed-time stories, especially the one about ‘Mary and her little lamb’. This one caused my Mary to look at her newborn twins and wander if she might need an optometrist as she seemed to be seeing double. The ‘white as snow’ bit also caused her consternation as she’s a black-faced Suffolk and her new off-spring looked like two emaciated Blue Heelers.
I don’t like ending stories on a sad note but if I am to remain chronological in my meanderings then it has to be so.
Yesterday afternoon at feeding time, after separating out the alpacas and corralling the sheep so they didn’t hassle each other, then tying up the goat so he couldn’t hassle the alpacas or the sheep, I noticed the horses where nowhere in sight. I fed the various groups and was hand-feeding Bill when behind me came the thunder of hooves. The Clydesdale, who just adores bread, pushed in to get a share of Bill’s dinner. Giving her a good whack on the rump and reinforcing that with ‘p… off’ she backed away.
What I did not see was that her hind legs had caught themselves up in Bill’s tether. As she backed away he was pulled under her back legs like the rabbit on a greyhound track. The mare becoming startled at suddenly noticing something hairy between her legs lurched wildly off. Unfortunately Bill went with her at an astonishing speed and was subsequently strangled by his own collar wrapped around the horses’ hooves.
Mercifully it was a quick end, the mare sensing something awful, hung around Bill’s body for at least an hour occasionally sniffing it. Maybe she knew something terrible had happened, who is to know. Well, as Ned Kelly said ‘such is life’.
Late last night I lowered him into the ‘Pit of Death’, lit an incense stick and played Bill Grogan’s ‘Goat Song’.
But before everyone lights candles and starts singing ‘Kumbaya’ it may be wise to know my misadventures will still continue next month.
GODFREY ZONE
A THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH
Who in their right mind would carry political correctness to such an extent that a recent sale described a high quality horse whip as a Horse Pacifier?
Pacifiers for Americans are Dummies to us.
Dummies to us are Americans.
Now I’ll just go and pacify myself a milkshake.
