Okay, NOW it’s Spring…
At last, they’ve let the new mamas and babies out in the fields. We have them on two sides (behind us is a house and across the road are the yearlings, too young to breed). I’d forgotten the racket lambs and they mamas make, night and day.
…meeeehhhhhhhhhh…
…AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…
Call and repeat. I love it. The Silence of the lambs is a thing, but we don’t have to be sad here. They move all the sheep to Winter pasture after harvest, so we never know who lives and who dies. The ewes I say good morning to today are the lambs I went SQUEEE over two years ago. It’s the circle of life, fam!
Ah, but I know what you’re thinking — that thing in the picture isn’t a lamb. No, it’s a pepper. A sweet pepper with the improbable name of Gogorez.
They’re billing it as a “beefsteak pepper” – short and fat and fleshy – and they’re promoting it super hard. Uncle B., the seasoned gardener that he is, is immune to such marketing nonsense.
But I’m not! He’s growing me a Gogorez!! SQUEEE!
April 3, 2018 — 7:15 pm
Comments: 7
Swans, Mr and Mrs
East Sussex Wildlife Rescue was called out to the Eastbourne Road to deal with an injured swan. Minutes later, they were called out to deal with the injured swan’s spouse. Nothing wrong with it, they just travel in pairs. Both are expected to be fine.
I like the colorful swan cozies.
It’s not at all uncommon here to see someone halt a car and get out to escort swans or other critters across the road. Animal mad, these people.
I had a lovely Easter weekend. Got lots of sleep, made my work deadline. Not really ready for that alarm to go tomorrow morning.
p.s. Pity nobody had Winnie Mandela in the Dead Pool. Nasty piece of work.
April 2, 2018 — 8:25 pm
Comments: 12
It’s coming!
Okay, so it’s kind of cold again tonight, but I dasn’t care — I saw a lamb today! A lot of them, in fact!
Not in our village; two villages over. The farmers carefully control lambing (by carefully controlling sexing) and ours aren’t due for another week. But it cheered me no end.
That, and everywhere around is alive with daffodils.
Funny thing, that. Daffodils don’t really propagate on their own. Not much. And the state doesn’t plant them, even though most of these are on the sides of the road on government land. This explosion of yellow that we see every Spring is because some poor bastard — or a lot of poor bastards over a lot of years — went out and bought bulbs, got on his knees and dug them in. Because he (or she) knew how awesome it would be to see them after a long Winter.
That idea cheers me up more than lambs.
March 26, 2018 — 8:56 pm
Comments: 12
Things that surprise no-one
Well, hell. I said to Uncle B that the Austin bomber was probably going to be a young white guy. It just fit the crime, you know? And so it turned out to be. I would have thought he would have more of an obviously ‘troubled past’, but it’s early days yet.
It’s a young white guy kind of crime. It saddens me, but it’s true.
Also in the ‘Things That Should Surprise No-one’ file, does anybody expect anybody to reject Trump because he slept with a porn star and a Playboy bunny? The dudebros who love him will think the whole thing is alpha as fuck.
And conservatives have known all along he’s not one of them. He’s a crass and vulgar man, duh. But what was anyone supposed to do? At least he’s not a pervert (guys who bed legendarily attractive women may be hounds, but they aren’t bent) and he’s less weak and weird than 95% of the people scrabbling for high office in my lifetime.
If “grab them by the pussy” didn’t do it, this is the weakest gotcha ever.
The picture is what turned up on a Google Images search for “surprise stoat.” It leads to an article about surveillance footage of a weasel on a trampoline. Follow it. You won’t be sorry.
March 21, 2018 — 10:26 pm
Comments: 20
You sure got to work it to offend these days…
Yep. Flaming chickens.
On Monday, the museum tried to explain that the chickens had not been harmed in the making of the work, stating that the video was made using special effects. (The work was housed in a separate exhibition room with a content warning.)
The museum said the work was produced in Morocco with a team of creative technicians and that the chickens were subject to a “flame effect only for three seconds and under the strict control of the technicians and the artist to avoid any suffering.”
A three second flame effect, huh? I doubt the chickens were impressed. Also, I dunno, “In 2008, the San Francisco Art Institute canceled his solo show that featured a video, “Don’t Trust Me,” which showed six animals being slaughtered with a sledgehammer.”
It is Monday, we are back inside a cold snap (known as “Beast from the East 2”) and I’m in a vile mood. I got problems only gin can solve.
March 19, 2018 — 9:50 pm
Comments: 14
one chicken leads to another
My first two chooks, Mapp and Lucia. Lucia was alpha hen. She woke up every morning, laid an egg, woke up the others and led them all over the garden, and dropped dead suddenly at three years old.
Mapp started laying six months after Lucia. She lays a handful of eggs every year and then goes broody, sitting on the nest all day trying to hatch baby chicks out of straw. At the end of the Summer, she picks herself up, shakes herself off and rejoins the flock. She will turn eight this Spring.
I tell you, laying eggs isn’t for pussies.
This year, I’m seriously considering calling her bluff. The farm where I bought these two also sells fertilized eggs. I’m thinking of popping half a dozen under Mapp to see what happens.
Most likely to happen: nothing. For once in her miserable life, she doesn’t go broody. Or she doesn’t do it right. Or they aren’t properly fertile.
Worst case scenario: they all hatch and they’re all roosters (but I wouldn’t find this out until I’m completely attached to the little peckerheads). That would be tragic. I couldn’t keep them all, I’d rather not keep even one, but I couldn’t bear to let them go for fox food. I’d have to market them as hand tamed pets and sweeten the deal somehow. Maybe give them away with a little watercolor portrait.
There are all sorts of in-between scenarios, like she could panic and murder those weird little fluffy things that destroyed her precious eggs. That happens sometimes. But ideally (and this is a long shot) I’d get a couple of good hens, and these ones would be properly hand-reared and friendly.
We’ll see. I’ve never heard of a bantam living past nine, so this is Mapp’s last chance. I promised her if she lived through the Winter, we’d give it a try.
She didn’t understand a word of that, of course, but still. You don’t break your word to a chicken.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
March 16, 2018 — 8:35 pm
Comments: 17
Sensible chuckle
It started with zoo keepers, but the funniest ones are from the punters, naturally. Twitter hashtag #rateaspecies rates animals as if they were Amazon products.
I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon. If you pay too much attention to the ratings, you’d never buy anything.
March 15, 2018 — 11:06 pm
Comments: 9
Chickens! In cool tinted specs!
A chicken’s vision is weighted toward the red/orange and away from blue/green. Makes sense when you remember their ancestors were woodland creatures and, then as now, they peck a living by spotting edible seeds and insects in grass and leaves. The downside is the sight of red, red chicken blood can make a flock go cannibal. In a big flock, little injuries happen and may not be noticed until it is Too Late. It starts with a peck and ends with…everyone eating Mabel alive.
So this guy invented red-tinted chicken specs that effectively make a chicken colorblind. They’re hinged. When the chicken leans forward, the lenses swing away and the bird can see normally. On the ground, where the food is.
Yes, they work. No, you can’t buy them any more. They’re mounted on a chicken’s beak by inserting a pin through the nostrils. It probably doesn’t hurt, but you know how people are about these things.
These days, they do the same job by beak trimming. A blunt beak isn’t good for plucking feathers (which is usually how a chicken gets the injury that leads to blood that leads to tragedy). Used to be, this was a pretty awful practice. There is feeling in the beak as it gets closer to a chicken’s face. These days, though, they have a neat procedure where they run a laser across the beak of a young bird, which cuts the blood vessels and the tip of the beak later falls off.
Make sure to follow the link and watch the lefthand video (it shows funny chickens in spectacles, not having stuff put through their nostrils).
March 13, 2018 — 8:08 pm
Comments: 16
The case for the prosecution rests, M’lud
Sorry. Got jammed up tonight (if you’re impressed with the post I didn’t post, you should see the work I didn’t work!).
I leave you with this iconic image and remind that the avian asshole on the right is a European robin and the poor birdie on the left is an innocent blue tit. I’m telling you, they’re a menace. A tiny, beautiful menace.
Teehee! Blue tit!
March 7, 2018 — 10:51 pm
Comments: 12
The last thing this poor girl ever saw
Okay, not really. Just a photobomb. (Video at the link).
This is a European robin, Erithacus rubecula, like the one I posted about last week. If you read the text, they’re all awwwing and cooing and wishing they had something to feed the adorable robin.
I guarantee you, if we could speak robin, that little thug is tweeting something like, “hey! HEY! I didn’t authorize you to take pictures! Come over here and I’ll mash your beak in for you, you big pink pansy!”
What would it be like to be a belligerent, psychopathic asshole trapped in the body of a tiny adorable feathery tennis ball?
March 6, 2018 — 9:03 pm
Comments: 17