Silky-Threaded Stories

Perfect weather for cosying up inside.

I miss my doggy Lester.

But it's getting easier.

This morning I saw a black and white doggy in next door's garden.  And then I thought I heard him/her crying, so I went outside to see if I could see what I could see.

When I got down to ground level I couldn't see the dog anywhere.  I stood outside for a while, sexed up to the nines in gumboots and dressing gown, the overhead decking shielding me a little from the rain that's been relentlessly falling for the last day or so.

And my fancy (bless her, she's a doll) began spinning a silky-threaded story.  I remembered how almost a year ago Chook-Chook came into my life in exactly the same way, through next door's fence.  And I began weaving a reincarnationary love story where the dog in the garden next door has been dumped, the way that Chook-Chook was (I think) dumped, because this dog is pregnant.  And the reason she has wended her way to the garden next door is because of the love agreement that Lester and I made last week via the ether, where I informed him that if he wishes to return to the earth again as another dogsbody, that I would be most happy to go another round.  And so we take the dog in, and she has babies.  And one of those babies is Lester-and-another.

I do like that story.

I went inside when I couldn't see the dog, all the better to see with from a heightened vantage point.  And there it was, also taking shelter under next-door's decking.  And then I saw a man, in the sexually arousing fluorescent yellow common to workers in any environment that's not in front of a computer.  And he was calling for Buster.  And from my vantage point I got to see the dog and see the man who couldn't see the dog.  And so I was able to direct the man to his dog.

Who, it turns out, was an old boy who was getting rather blind, and who had got out sometime last night. 

And so the man picked him up, and then turned to me with him in his arms and said, "Thanks a lot.  I'm gonna take him home now."

I think that lovely doggy is very much going to enjoy being inside today, warm and cosy and fed.  Just like me.  I have had a few days in a row of being out and about, seeing lovely inspiring people who feed me intellectually, and eating food I really can't afford to be eating (which of course made it even more enjoyable than usual).  And now, being filled up with those interactions, I am so grateful to be home and pottering about in my beautiful solitude that for the next almost-24 hours, there is simply nothing that would remove me from the house (unless it has something possibly to do with chocolate.  And I have a block of Lindt 85% here, so I really can't see that happening).

Dust to Dust

I recently wrote a how-to on Weekend Notes about raising backyard chooks.

It made me miss my chooks.  It's been a few weeks now since the fox got them.  A rather traumatising situation because it was pretty much my fault.  Instead of shutting them into their coop when it got dark, I had begun leaving it later and later, until I was going out and closing them in just before I went to bed at midnight or 1am.

One night the fox got to them before I did.  A (mercifully short) screaming sound sent me outside with my heart doing cliched things by being in my throat, and there was Selma gone, only her feathers left, and a poor Tristan lying shocked and dying in front of my eyes, on the inside of the coop near the door.

I shut him up in the coop.  I didn't know what else to do.  I didn't want the fox to come back for him.  A part of me was hoping that he was maybe just in shock, that if I came out the next morning he might have recovered somehow.  Most of me knew that it was not true.

I was so sad that I had neglected to look after these creatures.  I want to look after the world.  I cried the way you do when you're a kid, with a heaving chest that's so sore it's like someone has stabbed it with a knife.

Chook-Chook was still there the next morning, in the same spot.  And I wondered what to do with him.  Have you ever seen a dead body in real time?  When my Auntie Dawn died, I wanted to see her one last time to try to reconcile the fact that suddenly she was gone.  As if you can ever reconcile that by anything other than clock time, and even then not really.  She had been made up by the mortician and it just didn't really look like her anymore.  She wouldn't have needed to wear that particular shade of foundation if she was alive with blood rushing through her cheeks.  But it was good to see her one last time.

I saw my grandma too.  In terms of People You Want to Die Like, Grandma and Grandpa were both superstars.  She died on her birthday.  The carer at the nursing home brought her in a bunch of flowers somebody delivered.  She looked at them, said "Oh, how lovely," and then died.  I mean, how awesome, Grandma.  Seventeen years earlier, Grandpa had been out riding his bike to the shop, came back, had a bath, then died. 

In terms of People You Want to Die Like, I totally want to learn how to die as a process the way that Auntie Dawn did.  She was accepting.  Partly I think because she missed her husband and wanted to go be with him, and she was tired.  People might say that you should fight in those circumstances.  To rage, rage, against the dying of the light.  That you have to be brave and fight.  But surely it's braver to turn and face the unknown.  For the light is in the darkness too, and for all we know, death is an entryway back into the light we left when we came here.

I think that sort of view is partly the reason why a few days later after the chooks died, I was able to go outside and open up the coop door, and leave it open.  After all, the fox needed to eat too.  And Tristan wasn't there anymore, any more than Auntie Dawn, Grandma or Grandpa were when the whatever-it-was had left, and their bodies were truly like shells.

I do like to think that they are somewhere.  That they have gone back to that Source from which they came from.  But in a slight twist on the Buddhist, I like to think that this Source has grown bigger and more beautiful since before people were here, because the souls of every person and creature who has ever been born on the earth return to it, enlarging it.  The Source has been giving birth to itself, making itself bigger and more amazing than even the perfection it already was before.  With everyone home.

The gentleman rapist (being an anthropomorphising of chicken sex)

When it comes to finding food that will be yummy for his little flock, Tristan the rooster displays the most 19th century behaviour.  Ladies first is the consistent rule.  When his rustling in the dirt turns up something of culinary interest, he emits excited little squeals to tell Selma to come see what he's found.

Those squeals are outdone on the cuteness scale only by his burbling.  Tristan burbles his way through his day.  When I hear him burble while he's exploring the nesting box after I've laid down fresh and fluffy bedding, it makes me want to squeeze him until he pops.

If I could get my hands on him, that is.  Tristan is much more wary of me than Selma (and Patty in her short life).  Tristan keeps a respectful distance.  Although I do notice that the lower I get down to the ground, the more inclined he is to come closer.

So whenever Tristan makes that excited "food!" sound, Selma comes running.  And then he stands back, doffs his top hat, and waits for her to eat her share before he goes in to eats his own.

Very gentlemanly.

However, the chicken DNA code has some serious flaws, the same as for every other animal, and unsurprisingly in the animal kingdom, some of these surround the issue of sex.  Or, more specifically, hen consent.

There isn't any.  I've seen him, out in the yard, watching him from the decking.  She'll be walking ahead of him up the hill and he just comes from behind, in both senses of the word ... well, actually, I don't really know if he gets that far, in terms of, you know, roosterly ejaculation, not being au fait with the length of chicken sex before its end and neither with what chicken orgasms might look like.  But even though he's still quite a deal smaller than her, he sure has a red hot go.

I pondered all of this yesterday while I was doing some weeding.  The chooks accompanied me for the whole hour and a half that I was outside.  And while I contentedly pulled out the rampantly-growing wandering jew that is infecting the paws of my dog, I pondered, as is my wont, the cosmos, our place in it, beauty, God, and chicken sex.  I realised that I don't even know what a rooster penis looks like.  It doesn't even look like there's a space for one.

And indeed, I find out, in my morning's research for this post that indeed, roosters don't actually have a penis.  There is no penetration with chicken sex.  It's just connecting two bits and a transfer of sperm, and that's the deal, in about 20 seconds.  From my voyeuristic vantage point, it doesn't seem very exciting to me.  But then what the hell would I know about what's enjoyable or not enjoyable from out of the eyes of a chicken? 

All I know is that when I see Tristan take advantage, and jump on, and grab the back of Selma's neck with his beak, and do his bizzo, that I would think it would be a much nicer deal for her if maybe he asked her first :)

Chooky Casualty

My chooks have been free-ranging into the neighbours' yards.  It's a bit hard for them not to do so, because there are very few fences around here.  Yesterday evening, Tristan and Selma came back home, but no Patty.

I was hoping that maybe she'd gone broody and disappeared somewhere to lay copious eggs.  I was worried that a fox which is apparently in the area had got hold of her.  But I was hoping that she would come back.  This afternoon, though, our next-door neighbour told me that yesterday his wife heard the dog over the back fence making noise.  And so it looks like maybe poor old Patty (on the right in this photo) has come to an unfortunate end :(

I feel quite upset, actually.  It's funny how those little critters get under your skin.

When it comes to innocent creatures dying in (possibly - probably) circumstances where they are scared, I go to pieces.  I can concede all sorts of suffering accompanying our lives (with difficulty).  But my utopian heart balks at the idea of anything or anyone dying in terror.  It just shouldn't be :(

Rooster Camouflage

I have developed a theory about Tristan.

I think he's undercover.

I don't think he's a rooster.  I don't even think he's a boy.  I don't even think he's a chicken.

I think he's a 16 year old girl from Brisbane.  He gives himself away with his upward inflection.  Rrr-rrr-rrr-rrrrrRR???  He says.  And then it's like he remembers himself, and he reverts back to the standard Rrr-rrr-rrr-RRRrrrr.

Hmmm.

I'm loving my chook-chooks.  They are quite companionable little things.   Late Sunday afternoon I planted seedlings into the veggie patch, and they were quite happy to hang around, digging into things, being a bit chatty.  Luckily the chicken wire went up after only one bok choy leaf was eaten.