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/)