A TIME TO REAP

                 The haying is almost done.  Put in by my 74 yr old neighbor who has been kind enough to help since we moved here.  He's wiry with skin as weathered as the old equipment he drives but still moves with that spring in his step.  His favorite sweat encrusted hat is turned up and patched this year where it has frayed.   Around his neck is an old rag that he dips in the brook to cool himself.  I see him stop the tractor several times to look for pheasants in the tall grass and watch him pop a few babies in his shirt pocket. 

          " I can't save them all"  he says.  But he tries.

                I like him. He is an ad for the values I've come to appreciate as I get older.  Hard work,  tenacity,  perseverance.

           The two lads that show up to help stack the barn are a quarter his age but he can out do them both.  They sweat profusely,  guzzle water,  and compare blisters while he works around them. 
             
           I'm probably riding in a small pocket of misfortune right now but I've had a hard time getting good young men to help out.  They lack strength,  fortitude,  foresight,  and plain old common sense.  They should know how to stack wood,  fill gas tanks,  tie a slip knot.  These are things they should have learned from their fathers and grandfathers.  They complain of allergies,  bad backs,  fear of heights.

           One young man left the top two feet of our barn doors unpainted as he was afraid to go up the ladder further.

           I wanted to tell him that when I was his age I went sky diving.  I jumped out of a plane at 3000 feet.  I was scared too.   But it was Sunday and I spread open to the silence and finally descended close enough to hear the organ playing in the little country church far below me.    I wanted to explain it all to him.   To tell him there is nothing to be afraid of in this great country of ours,  our charmed world.  The only thing he should fear is that extra 85 pounds he was carrying around,  the little fat globules clutching the side of his young arteries.

          But he is not me.

          I tell the young men to go to the swimming hole to cool off.  I bring lemonade and more water.  I ponder over how much I will pay them.  I worry the hay will not be all in before tomorrows rain.  But then the miracle happens.  A car drives in the yard.  It's the neighbors wife and she's here to help.

I DON'T GIVE A RATS ASS.....OR DO I?

Rats giggle when you tickle them

They're voices are so high pitched you need special instruments to hear

But when you do they're laughter becomes immediately evident

               I take pride in the fact that on my little farm I treat my animals with respect.   Not just the animals I own but also the ones I encounter.   I am not a practicing Buddhist but I appreciate some of their teachings,  and I like the phrase that we are "all sentient beings."   Yes, I have been known to carry a wayward spider outdoors to safety.   Yes, I have brought in a sick chicken and nursed it behind the old wood stove.   Yes, I have trapped invaders and spent hours transporting them to more remote areas.

               The exception though is rats.

               I had no idea the damage rats could do and their speed of reproduction until the winter they invaded the barn and feed room.  At first I thought I might be imaging it . Maybe that gnawing and tunneling was a weasel and I could just set a trap and problem solved.  I went out one night with my trusted 3000 candle power flashlight and there they were.  Rats.  Feasting,  frolicking,  hosting open sexual orgies in the storage room.

                                   

               What would you do?

               I put out rodent bait, the stuff that says it works quickly and waited.  In three days I found dead rats, and a few more staggering weakly in the yard wondering what had gone wrong with their ideal life.  Shortly my rat problem was over.  Or so I thought....     

               In mid April I called in our neighbor with his front end loader to move the manure pile next to the barn.  He was almost finished and was lifting the last bit of steaming goodness  next to the barn wall when I went out to pay him.  I saw something drop out of the bucket of his loader.  Two baby rats.  Two pink... hairless creatures... eyes closed... squirming and nudging each other.  Newborn baby rats.  Out of the corner of my eye I could see the loader heading with the last load out to the far pasture.  The ground was clean now, and there were no siblings, no mother, nothing scampered near by

               What would you do?

               Rat Facts:     
                                      Rats can become fertile at 5 wks and   have five litters a year of 7 to 15 pups
                                      They can chew through wood, metal and even concrete
                                      They can swim half a mile
                                      They can fall 15 meters and not be injured 
                                      They can go longer without water than a camel
                                      A rat can survive a large amount of radiation
                                      Rats can kill small baby animals and pets

              What I did was walk quickly over and raise my oversize five pound thrift  - store rubber boot over their heads.
              But I couldn't bring it down. 

              Why?  Life is a paradox sometimes.

              What I did was go to the house and make a nice cup of chai tea.  The mother rat would come back and get them, and I would get what was left of the poison and put it out.

               Murder by accidental poisoning is easier.  I must remember that for future reference.

               When I came back an hour later they were still there. I glanced around but only the pony was staring suspiciously through the smoky barn window.

               I ignored all those rat facts above, bent down and slipped them quickly in the left pocket of my jacket.

              According to the Comprehensive Manual of Rat Care you can't just feed newborn rats anything.  So much for my plan of just blending up  leftovers with the sour milk in the fridge.   They need something close to their  mothers milk, and you can give them a little dilute pedialyte to hold them over so I headed off to the drug store.  I searched through no less then a dozen cans of infant formula, reading the ingredients, hoping to find something that said 'Recommended for Rodents.'  A helpful clerk approached.

                "How old is the baby" she asked 
                "Newborn" I replied. 
                "Has the mother been breast feeding ?" she inquired                  "No,  I think the mothers dead"  I said 
                She gave me the 'look' and stumbled back a bit into the display of breast pumps.  
                "You think?"  she gasped.

                 Shortly I headed home with my supplies :
                 Bottle pedialyte   $7.95
                 Syringe                  $2.98   
                 Isomil Advance infant powder  32.95!!

                 At home the babies were wiggling around in their new shoebox home and I found it remarkably easy to flip them holding the loose skin on their neck and give them their first feeding. 

                 Like I'd been babysitting rats all my life.  

                 I will tell you proudly that the rats lived.   At first I fed them four to six times a day.   In eleven days their eyes opened.   They grew fur.   They started to come out and anticipate their mealtime.   They 'held' the syringe and sucked greedily.  I started giving them pieces of fruit and seeds and dry bread.  They started to play with one another and they ran up the sleeve of my sweater.   Yes, they became cute.   I mean, look at the picture again.   What amazed me the most was how clean they were.  They were constantly washing up.  Disturbed when I spilled something on them they washed each other.
 
                It was cold and damp that spring and I kept them longer then I should have.   I moved them to a larger cage and started introducing bits of meat and bugs.   The one weekend hubby and I got out of town my trusted neighbor friend helped look after the place.   We had loaded the car and I was shouting last minute instructions.

               "Oh, and I forgot to mention the two rats in the back porch.  "Instructions on the cage,"  I yelled.
    
                We knew her well and we felt confident as we sped quickly away. 

                It was a warm Sunday in late May when I scooped the little creatures in my jacket pocket and headed toward the river on our old A.T.V.   About a km from our house I put them carefully at the base of an old hollow log.   I deposited enough dog food and scraps to last them about six months.   Although I knew they wouldn't stay around it made me feel better.

                 Rat Facts:
                                      If a member of a rat pack becomes ill they will care for it
                                      A lonely rat becomes depressed 
                                      Rats like chocolate
                                      Rats are affectionate, curious and intelligent.  They love games
                                      Rats are an important part of Eastern spirituality
                                      They have been used to sniff out land mines and have been found to be able to detect tuberculosis
                                       95 % of wild rats don't make it through their first year

                  As I drove away I looked back to see them scampering around the tree.  I know I imagined it , but I thought I heard a giggle.

                 Over head a hawk circled.
                                        
                                       
  

PEACOCK PASSION

A FOWL ADVENTURE

 

 " God loved birds so he made trees.  Man loved birds so he made cages"

Jacques Duval

 

                      Not long ago I acquired peafowl  and I'm no expert on their sex lives but I'm learning.  They don't reach sexual maturity until about two to three years and my hens are barely two yrs.   The male peacock though is over four,  and you can tell come April his thinking turns amorous.   Like a lot of males he struts and spends a lot of time on his appearance.   He spreads his elaborate tail feathers and rattles them to attract the females.   He circles and seems to push out his private parts and 'wink' at the hens.   They seem aloof,  uninterested, and continue picking the various insects falling from  the garden plants.  He's irritable and he screams a lot, but bless him, at least he spends a lot of time on foreplay.   If he has been lucky enough to have  a sexual encounter I've missed it.   Perhaps I tell him,  next summer when the girls are a bit more mature, and bored with the same old garden tour they will be more impressed.

                 I did get a surprise  though, when one of the peahens started acting strangely.   She would disappear for most of the day and them come home to frantically gulp some food and water and tear off again across the field.    She reminded me of myself when I was working as an  E.R. nurse.  No time for a decent lunch or bathroom break,  just rush rush.  She had that same familiar wild look in her eye.  Then the final straw.   She stopped coming home at night.

                 One misty afternoon in late August I decided to follow her.   She sprinted across the pasture and through the page wire fence.    By the time I did a not so graceful  critical-crotch  maneuver over the fence and picked myself up to check for broken bones  she was in the woods.     I eventually found her sitting in a hollow looking glassy eyed.    At first I thought she might be ill.    Although fairly tame, I can't normally touch or  'pet'  these birds.   They keep an arms length distance.  Now just as a heavier rain started to fall I reached out and ran  my hand over her back.

                 Slowly, very slowly,  she stood up to reveal five perfect eggs.

                 During the day my peafowl are free range but every evening at dusk they come home and roost in the rafters of the barn.   They are safe.    I know I'm probably pushing my luck.    There's hardly a day that I don't see a coyote prowling the perimeter of our fields, not to mention the raccoons and hawks.   Now here she was venerable, and because of her age and what I understood,  her eggs probably weren't fertile so it was all for nothing.   But how was I to know for sure?    So I did what seemed sensible.  I went back to our barn and built her a nest.

.               Up in the hay mow and partially covered with a tarp and the softest hay I could find it was a glorious nest.

                I went back to find her still sitting there  meditating.   I put her eggs in a bag and she let me lift her without much fuss.   Once I had the right grip I headed off.    I knew I'd never get over that fence juggling a ten pound struggling bird, so I walked the quarter mile perimeter to the gate.    It was raining briskly now,  and my hair mixed with hay and sweat was plastered to my forehead.   I was soaked to the bone.   My glasses were steamed up,  and  I needed to pee badly.   But I felt it was a noble thing I was doing so I stumbled on.

               I deposited her on the  nest and gingerly slid the eggs underneath her.    I wanted to crawl in myself it was so calm and inviting up there in the rafters.   I sighed  knowing what a wonderful conscientious farmer-woman I had become and went in the house to clean up.

              Thirty minutes later she was gone.

              She didn't come back for two days.   I couldn't find any more eggs and she ignored the penthouse nest I had constructed.   After a week I bit my lip and destroyed the eggs.

                   Sometimes I'm even a little angry that we import wildlife to a country where they don't belong. We lock them in cages and stare at them.  We expect them to cope in a habitat they're not adapted too.  Next season I will be ready.  I'll get an incubator and try and keep the females penned.  They are here now, a part of my life on Windy River Farm.  All you can do is try and protect the things your love.

             Are you having any fowl adventures?

PEACOCKS

               A peacock and his two hens prance majestically around our dilapidated old farm house.   Well, it's not extremely dilapidated but it's over 100yrs old.  The floors are crooked.   Too much wind still makes it's way in through the wall plugs, and it needs lots of updates that never did get done.  The peacocks seem out of place here.  They have that attitude about them,  you know,  that peacock attitude that says they belong at a palace or a lavish estate.

              That attitude that says   " I was acquired to amuse the barons grand daughter."

              They appear bored with the terrain here.  No shimmering ponds or crystal lake in which to admire themselves.   No perfectly manicured lawns or gardens in which to preen themselves.  Instead they occupy themselves by lining up on the patio railing and staring intently in our bathroom window.  This never fails to produce screams both from myself and the peacocks when I step out of the shower,  and they strain their necks forward to tap on the window.   This is my own fault as I've thrown peanuts  on the patio several times to treat them  and they've simply come to wait with anticipation.  No thought of voyeurism at all in their nugget size brains.

              Yes,  peacocks do scream, and they have several vocalizations,  for mating,  for fright,  and as warnings.   I've managed to distinguish about five different calls that I can actually mimic quite well.  One sounds like their own version of the word  'help'.   A loud, high pitched drawn out HEEELLP  HEEELLP.   Another is their own stylized version of what I can only describe as  "a..hole"  (pronounced  ahh...hole)   AHH HOLE... AHH.HOLE....HEEELLP...AHH.HOLE.  You get the picture.   Occasionally in the evening when I want to round them up I find them by mimicking these sounds.   They often do respond and I call them in for the night.   A friend looked a bit alarmed one evening when she came to visit only to find me circling the barn again and again screaming  "AHH.HOLE...HEEELP"  at the top of my lungs.

 

 

                 Our male  has been named after a substitute teacher I had in high school.   A skinny nervous  Ickabod, with a long neck and protruding adams apple his only goal was to just make it through his classes without embarrassment.   Which he never did.   We saw to that.  He had that bird like strut and he flexed his neck with every step.  He also blushed more then any man I've ever known.  He was actually more like a flamingo.
               If you look closely at the photo above you will see the one grievance I have with these beautiful birds,  their droppings.  We're not talking about raisins here.  We're talking about a pile that would put your uncle Ernie to shame.   And they will perch on vehicles.   I've noticed they are partial to blue metallic Toyotas  with shiny chrome bumpers in which they stare at themselves for hours.

              When people complain about a little bird doo doo on their windshield I always show them them this picture.

              The peacock and his hens are now roosting in our barn most days to avoid the chilly weather.  I anxiously await warmer days when I will sit on our faded lopsided deck and sip some cheap wine.   The birds will float past me in their dignified brilliance.   I am after all the lady of the manor.   I may even put a curtain on that damn  bathroom window.
          

              So whose peeking in your windows??

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD WOMEN

                                                               

                                  It's March now, and even though in my corner of Nova Scotia we were blessed with a little dusting of snow last night it won't last long.  The sun has some strength and there is that 'feeling' of spring.
                     
                        I have named our little hobby farm Windy River for a reason.  It borders the Salmon River and it is very very windy here.

                     The storm in early February that hit the eastern coast dropped a lot of snow in our yard.  The next day I couldn't get out of our driveway, but what really pissed me off was that I couldn't get out of the house.  The wind had drifted snow against both doors and I could only get them open a few inches before they would bind up against the snow bank.

                      I knew I would be rescued because the guy that plows our drive would show up eventually.   Eventually.   And he did.   He comes in to get paid, and if he wanted his money he would have to come  'in the door'   There's nothing that will get you rescued faster then someone who needs to get to your purse.   I can never get him on the phone and he doesn't have a cell, so that lamp was also a signal he knows about that I need some help.  A beacon... like a lighthouse.  Archaic I know but it works.

                    The wind blew and blew and the next day I was trapped again.  I didn't really worry because I had stocked my three favorite things that I use for survival  - wine, chocolate, and lots of organic chicken in our freezer.

                    It's hard to see in the photo but one of the books I'm reading is on the window sill. ' No Country For Old Men.' 

                    I'm thinking this is no country for old women.