When Camilla Parker Bowles shat on the windscreen

 

Camilla as a gosling with her penmate Badger

When we were out for our morning walk great, untidy Vs of Canada Geese honked their way across the skies to their morning feeding grounds. So noisy they were, even Roger stopped to watch them fly over, a puzzled look upon his face.

Canada Geese always remind me of the orphan “ duckling” I took off an academic from Bangor university for she turned out to be a magnificent , doe eyed specimen, with a haughty look and regal lines. No wonder the village child announced precociously that she should be named after the then Prince of Wales old beau when I asked her jokingly to name her.

Occasionally Camilla would take to the skies when the mood took her, but she proved to be a terrible flyer all told and the following is an excerpt from a blog from seven years ago when Camilla crash landed on the local binmen’s lorry

Enjoy

 

“After sorting out the valve system on the radiators I was just getting all testosterone and full of myself when the council bin men lorry pulled up outside the cottage and one of the hairy arsed bin men knocked loudly on the front door .
I was half expecting them to be in a pissy mood after all I had left half a ton of plumber's packaging and bin bags out for collection but the binman wasn't bothered about the rubbish, he was more upset than anything
" One of your birds has smashed into our van" he told me
Apparently they had just turned the corner at the bottom of the lane when " a soddin massive black bird" had appeared from nowhere and had bounced on the roof of their refuse lorry, just above the windscreen.
The bird then " shat" down the windscreen ( probably in shock) then bounced into the hedge.
" It's still alive" the binman told me " it was hissing at us"
" It's probably Camilla Parker Bowles "I told him " She's a crap flyer"
The binman looked confused.

I could have done without another little drama. I was still getting used to the heating system more complicated than the average ITU ventilator and had already fixed a leaking radiator single handed a few minutes before, so with slightly heavy and irritated heart I followed the binman down the lane to where his three colleagues were peering into the hedge.
" It's in there" one man chirped up pointing to a goose sized hole in the hedge
I looked in and sure enough Camilla looked back at me with her big black solemn eyes.
As I reached in and picked her up, the binman who had knocked on the door turned to his friends and said" her name is Camilla Parker Bowles !" They all nodded with interest in a chorus of " ooos and arrhhhs"

Apart from a massive crap stain on her back end , Camilla looked shocked but unhurt. So I thanked the binmen and apologied for any damage caused.
" It will have to be logged " , the senior binman said " she's dented the roof" but they were soon on their way and Camilla was soon sat in a dark calm goose house under observation"

I wonder what the binmen would log in their incident file?
"Camilla Parker Bowles crash landed on our bin lorry today and she shat all over the windscreen "
Dirty girl.......”

Camilla after the collision 

Camilla Parker Bowles Takes To The Skies.

That's two and a half hours I won't ever get back.

Foolishly, I let Mary have a gallop around the field this afternoon.
Goo-goo eyed she chased the sheep, (undaunted by their brief show of horn and stamping feet ) and like a lunatic rounded up the remaining hens and boxed them into a coop before scattering them again  to the four winds.
She was impossible to catch.
I almost grabbed her several times, but like most puppies, she sensed the chase to be a game and bounced under the gate into the lower field where the geese had been hiding.
The domestic geese, Russell, Jo and Kate all stood their ground and hissed and honked their displeasure as Mary galloped around them , only Camilla panicked and in a fit of hysteria took off from the field.
Now Camilla, is essentially a wild Canada goose so should,on paper , retain her ability to fly, but since I raised her, she has more or less followed her adopted flock's sedentary grassed based existence.  In four years she has perhaps glided a mere 100 feet, and on two occasions has crash landed  into the fields next door on windy days.
Today, Camilla took off like a jet fighter. She circled the field in an untidy loop at a height of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet, then, buffeted by a gust of wind  she soared away over the Church and out of sight past the Rectory.
" Shiiiiiitttttttttttt!"
I managed to grab Mary and locked her inside a hen house before galloping like a loon through the Churchyard in pursuit but Camilla was no where to be seen.
I searched the livery stable fields, Pippa's field where the alpacas eyed me nervously , The Rectory gardens and the village green beyond, but there was no sign.
I even raised a few eyebrows down nearby Well Street by calling " CAMILLA!" down alleyways and driveways, but that part of the village was deserted too.
The lady from Abbott House looked particularly surprised when I told her that I was looking for a black and white goose called Camilla Parker Bowles.....like you do.
Systematically, I extended the search.
I checked behind the pub and the chapel and behind the cottages on London Road and still there was no sign, so I went up Byron Street and knocked on a few doors.
An  old chap who was washing his car told me that he had seen a " low flying goose" heading East
" she was honking like a train" he said.
I was onto something
Now on the far east part of Trelawnyd is an upmarket housing estate of say ten houses and beyond that are Basil the farmer's sheep fields. So I took a chance and climbed over a few fences and nearly two hours after the whole bloody mess started, I found Camilla sitting open beaked where she had crash landed in the centre of a flock of ewes.

Bruised and battered but ok, Camilla returning home

I carried her all the way home
And after I introduced her back with her flock mates I returned to the cottage for a restorative cup of coffee and a custard tart.
It was only then , that I remembered Mary locked away in the hen house!

A Reunion for Camilla (updated)

This afternoon , an elderly chap will be visiting the field. He lives over 200 miles away, but will be stopping by with his daughter in order to have a reunion of sorts.
He will be coming to see Camilla.
Two years ago, he found what he thought to be a grey duckling in his garden.
He placed the duckling in the conservatory, fed it porridge and panicked when it not only survived, but thrived under his care.
Only then did he realise that he had no real idea of how to look after a duckling who was doubling in size every few days ( or so it seemed)
Luckily his daughter reads my blog, and so, after some minor telephone and email negotiations the ducking was transported all the way up to Wales.
Of course the duckling wasn't a duckling at all. She was a buxom and rather adorable Canada goose gosling with big, black sad eyes and feet the size of dinner plates.
I fell in love with her as soon as she arrived
She was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen
I have a thing for goslings
Readers may remember that I teamed her up with an orphaned chick called badger, whose mother had been killed by a marauding boar badger a week or so previously.
The two birds were inseparable until Camilla eventually joined the other field geese when they realised that she was indeed " one of them" and Badger took over as alpha male cockerel in the Ukrainian Village.

Camilla and Badger in their salad days

I will post some photos of the " reunion" a bit later. Funny that two plus years after the event, Camilla's former carer still has that " bond" with the orphan that so luckily found him in his bungalow back garden one spring morning.

Camilla gave her old owner a rather shy but sweet welcome

Sexing Camilla ( a revisit)

 No news. On night shift so I will post an old post from way back in 2013

Enjoy

Sexing Camilla

My profession (aka. Paid job) is as a wildlife ecologist,so I can finally offer you some professional advice John! Since Canada geese are not sexually dimorphic (they have the same plumage), in order to tell the sex of the bird you have to get up close and personal with them. This entails grabbing the goose, putting it on its back between your legs on the ground with the head tucked under your body and pressing hard with your thumbs on either side of the vent/cloacal opening. If it is a gander, a corkscrew shaped appendage will pop out. If not, you have a female. On goose banding days we do hundreds of them at a go. We also do bag checks of duck hunters and it is much easier sexing a dead goose than a live one!

So said the delightful Sherry from Spinners End Farm and this morning I took her advice, grabbed Camilla/ Charles ( delete when appropriate) when I let the animals out of their houses and in one swift movement popped the goose on his back and straddled him.

Everything was going swimmingly, even though Camilla was honking like an express train, and I was just about to flex the old thumbs around the aforementioned cloacal opening when all hell let loose.

I had just had time to turn my head to the right when I was hit in the face by a flurry of claws, beak and red feathers.

No doubt spurred on by Camilla's distress calls, Eric the diminutive cockerel had suddenly decided to go all super hero and batter the shit out of me, and luckily for him I was in an ideal position ( with my hands busy) not to be able to defend myself.

Eric got several more karate chops in before I made a run for it.

Camilla remains unsexed

And I got my arse well and truly kicked by a six inch high cockerel

Royal Arse

After sorting out the valve system on the radiators I was just getting all testosterone and full of myself when the council  bin men lorry pulled up outside the cottage and one of the hairy arsed bin men knocked loudly on the front door .
I was half expecting them to be in a pissy mood after all I had left half a ton of plumber's packaging and bin bags out for collection but the binman wasn't bothered about the rubbish, he was more upset than anything
" One of your birds has smashed into our van" he told me
Apparently they had just turned the corner at the bottom of the lane when " a soddin massive black bird" had appeared from nowhere and had bounced on the roof of their refuse lorry, just above the windscreen.
The bird then " shat" down the windscreen ( probably in shock) then bounced into the hedge.
" It's still alive" the binman told me " it was hissing at us"
" It's probably Camilla Parker Bowles "I told him " She's a crap flyer"
The binman looked confused.

I could have done without another little drama. I was still getting used to the heating system more complicated than the average ITU ventilator and had already fixed a leaking radiator single handed a few minutes before, so with slightly heavy and irritated heart I followed the binman down the lane to where his three colleagues were peering into the hedge.
" It's in there" one man chirped up pointing to a goose sized hole in the hedge
I looked in and sure enough Camilla looked back at me with her big black solemn eyes.
As I reached in and picked her up, the binman who had knocked on the door turned to his friends and said" her name is Camilla Parker Bowles !" They all nodded with interest in a chorus of " ooos and arrhhhs"

Apart from a massive crap stain on her back end , Camilla looked shocked but unhurt. So I thanked the binmen and apologied for any damage caused.
" It will have to be logged " , the senior binman said " she's dented the roof"  but they were soon on their way and Camilla was soon sat in a dark calm goose house under observation"

I wonder what the binmen would log in their incident file?
"Camilla Parker Bowles crash landed on our bin lorry today and she shat all over the windscreen "
Dirty girl.......

Camilla the actress

. Over the years The Archers' cast has been joined by various famous celebrities, who have popped up in cameo roles in the middle England village . Judi Dench,Ewan Mc Gregor and Terry Wogan, amongst others have chirped up with the odd few words as have Princess Margaret and The Duke Of Westminster, who appeared in the early 1980s in support of the NSPCC.
Last night Camilla the Duchess of Cormwall arrived at Grey Gables (.BBC Camilla story)..she had a "nice chat-et" with the velvet voiced Caroline and waxed lyrically over the too-good-to-be-true Ian, and his shortbread........before popping off to another engagement....but short as it was, her appearance in the 60 year old soap was indeed a bit of a coup for the BBC and I think another small coup for her personally. (Although Camilla, it must be said that you should not give up your "day job"!)
I like Camilla. She is what she is!  a lady of some privilege with a warm personality and a slightly gung ho attitude who doesn't push herself or her thoughts too much down the publics' throat.
She is, in fact a typical upper middle class lady, who could roll her sleeves up with the best of them to help clean the horses out or chop logs or run the local Flower Show......you recognise the sort don't you?.........a lady who may be full of flu that still walks the dogs in the rain cos it "bloody well just needs doing!" 

I look forward to see Queen Camilla in a few years time....with her wellies and headscarf on, driving the 4 x 4 back from Waitrose!
Now I am off to my brother's house. I am going up to help him with his tracheal suction and the like whilst my sister in law gets some jobs done in town....it' will be nice to be useful

Camilla Or Could It Be Charles?

Camilla ( or Charles) leaving her/his bachelor pad this morning

Things return to normal today. Chris has already left for the University early this morning and Sorrel leaves on the 10 am train. Trelawnyd, for me will change from a full,constantly " moving" cottage interior , returning to the steady routine of vegetable bed preparation and rooster arse Vaseline dabbing.

April heralds the start of goose eggs season.

Winnie and Jo always choose to drop their large oval eggs inside the goose house and as soon as they arrive, Camilla, the Canada Goose gets ousted from the flock.

It happened last year and no doubt it will happen next year, as suddenly the three domestic geese decide that Camilla cannot be tolerated for the duration of the short egg laying season.

I suspect Camilla is in fact a gander.

Perhaps any professional  " goose person" out there could confirm my  suspicions.I would be grateful

In the meantime, Camilla is shacked up with Bogbrush and his cohorts, and will spend a lonely and slightly sad existence on the periphery of the goose flock until hormones return to normality in a couple of months.

Right, I can hear my MIL stirring so I am off to cook her breakfast.....

I may treat myself to a scotch egg after I drop her off at the station......Marks And Spencer do a cracking quality two pack!

...get me........Marks & Spencer Scotch eggs on a Monday!

How decadent 

Hey ho

Monday's Diary

 In 2006, shortly after we arrived in Trelawnyd, I decided to write an on-line diary chronicling the mundane and the new in our new country based life here in Wales.

Ok some days I will go off on one ( as the meandering rubbish of yesterday will testify to) but generally the purpose of Going Gently is simply that of a daily journal.

So today, I will return to those little daily dramas...those tiny snippets of the every-day, so to speak

Yesterday was Palm Sunday. It was a beautiful spring day, and as usual part of the St Michael's Church  service was held by the ancient 14th Century prayer Cross in the old Graveyard.

I snapped a few photos of the small congregation and remember feeling suddenly  a little melancholy at the thought that in perhaps ten years time, the congregation would have been whittled down to almost nothing

 Today, everything is all very different. The weather is cold, wet and miserable, and the bright greens of yesterday have morphed into the more traditional browns and greys of a damp spring.

The rain has however transformed our tiny back garden from it's winter "nothingness" into a pre flowering  greenery, as great clumps of Aquilegia vulgaris have started to flourish. 

Mother-in-law Sorrel arrives on Thursday, I am hoping that the granny's Bonnet's will be flowering by then.

On the field, not all the animal relationships have remained Walt Disney-esque, and a marked split within the ranks of the geese has resulted in Camilla the Canada goose being ostracised from the flock.

The only reason I can think of that this may happen, is the fact that Camilla may indeed be a "Charles"

and that the resident gander, the benign Russell, has decided that another male is surplus to requirements, but watching the interaction between ALL of the geese, it is noticeable that even Jo and Winnie seem somewhat wary of "Camilla" when "she" approaches.

Last night a somewhat lonely Camilla was housed with the "Crackhead whores" in the hen house next to the goose house

(perhaps the more knowledgeable goose keepers amongst my blog readers could give me a few ideas of what is exactly going on?)

Camilla or could it be Charles?

Yesterday ,several of the neighbours made a point of happily  mentioning that Albert seems to be "back on form" now. The skinny, somewhat elusive cat has obviously endeared himself to the residents of the five houses in our part of the village, and his recent absence from their gardens has been worrying for all of them that enjoy the company of a cat who resembles Sammy Davis Jnr 

It's funny howmany people enjoy vicarious pleasure in someone Elsie's pet.

This morning I snapped this somewhat blurry photo of Albert,wrapped around George and Meg after they all had returned from their morning walk.

It is nice to see Albert back on form............
********************************************************************************

Weight Watchers weigh in 14 stone 5 lbs

No weight loss this week

Must have been all that white wine!!!!

Bugger!!!

Sexing Camilla

My profession (aka. Paid job) is as a wildlife ecologist,so I can finally offer you some professional advice John! Since Canada geese are not sexually dimorphic (they have the same plumage), in order to tell the sex of the bird you have to get up close and personal with them. This entails grabbing the goose, putting it on its back between your legs on the ground with the head tucked under your body and pressing hard with your thumbs on either side of the vent/cloacal opening. If it is a gander, a corkscrew shaped appendage will pop out. If not, you have a female. On goose banding days we do hundreds of them at a go. We also do bag checks of duck hunters and it is much easier sexing a dead goose than a live one!

So said the delightful Sherry from Spinners End Farm and this morning I took her advice, grabbed Camilla/ Charles ( delete when appropriate) when I let the animals out of their houses and in one swift movement popped the goose on his back and straddled him.

Everything was going swimmingly, even though Camilla was honking like an express train, and I was just about to flex the old thumbs around the aforementioned cloacal opening when all hell let loose.

I had just had time to turn my head to the right when I was hit in the face by a flurry of claws, beak and red feathers.

No doubt spurred on by Camilla's distress calls, Eric the diminutive cockerel had suddenly decided to go all super hero and batter the shit out of me, and luckily for him I was in an ideal position ( with my hands busy) not to be able to defend myself.

Eric got several more karate chops in before I made a run for it.

Camilla remains unsexed

And I got my arse well and truly kicked by a six inch high cockerel

Eric wounds...I need a hot sweet tea

Eric is the one on the left with the killer expression

Giving as good as I get.....

I just wanted to illustrate that sometimes humans win over aggressive cockerels ( see previous post)
And sometimes the cockerels win
Forgive the repeat blogs from 2013 but they kind of illustrate my point

" f*ck......I've Just Killed Bogbrush!"

Sometimes you just don't think when faced with a " difficult" situation

You just react.

And that does not always work out the way you would wish.

This evening, just as I was encouraging the tiny Useless little buggers into their coop

Bogbrush the aggressive silkie cockerel

Hurtled forward and started to kick the shit out of the tiny male bantam right in front of me.

Without a thought I swung the tin feed bowl I was holding and clacked Bogbrush smartly on the head with it to teach him a lesson in manners

And unfortunately this was the result

RIP Bogbrush

Life is hard sometimes

When you are a bully

There is always someone bigger than you

Egg Heist

I was just in the process of making the bed when I heard a God awful commotion on the field.
It was Camilla and she was honking like an express train.
I ran to the window thinking a fox had struck, only to see Winnie struggling to squeeze herself under the dividing gate from the bottom to the top field. Camilla was behind her honking angrily and was snapping at her struggling bottom while the other dogs gleefully bounced around behind the fencing obviously enjoyed the drama.
Some egg thievery was afoot!
I grabbed my ipad and jogged over to capture what was left of the drama on film

It is the ever resourceful George who has taught Winnie to steal eggs, but wisely George has never tried to nab one of the goose eggs when they are broody. Winnie's greed obviously had got the best of her and when Camilla was off the nest for a moment she had ventured into the goose house, grabbed an egg and had legged it.
Unfortunately for her Camilla had seen the theft and had launched what can only be described as a spirited defence.

But Bulldogs love their food, and a few bites up the arsehole didnt upset Winnie too much for when I got over to the field, she was busy eating the contents as Camilla sulked on the sidelines.

A Mixed Bag- Fickle updates/Camilla and farting pigs

The Indian Runners in defensive mode....watching a cat in the long grass

To answer Mrs Fickle's anxious email...YES the hysterical Indian Runner Ducks are still with me!

The field compliment of ducks has plateaued at 8 birds. (5 Indian Runners females, 1 Indian runner cross female, 1 magpie female and Halleh, the bog standard lone drake with sexuality problems .

I need a runner drake to bring back a better blood line within the group and Halleh, who has practically tried to rape every dark coloured hen on the field, will be removed to pastures new.

Most of the ducks are over two years old now and despite their maturity still they retain the rather irritating persona of a group of teenage girls that have been locked inside a ghost train.

Every move you make on the field, whether it be filling up the pond with a bucket or scratching your arse with the blunt end of the garden hoe, the runners will spy your actions, look at each other with slightly anxious expressions then launch themselves into what only could be described as uncontrolled hysterics

"Scream!!!!!!run!!!!!!!!!!! run like the wind"

I love them dearly.....they lay scores of beautiful blue eggs too! but I could slap each and every one of them

Yesterday I decided to rename CJ.

He/she is far too graceful and beautiful to have such a teenage name, so I thought I would ask the first person to stop by the field to suggest a more fitting title!

Around 2pm a woman and her young daughter stopped to ask if I had any chicks for sale. After a brief conversation I asked the daughter ( who looked like Ugly Betty) if she could think of a new name for CJ.

I explained that the young Canada goose needed a name in keeping with her slim, graceful and pretty new image...

The girl didn't hesitate

"Camilla Parker Bowles!" she lisped without hint of irony

And so...children let that be a lesson to you all...... Camilla it is!!!

Camilla with trusty Badger still in tow

I will leave you with a note of caution.....

I was rushing this morning as I needed to get to my brother's house for 9.15am.

As I was galloping down to water the pigs I heard someone walking their dogs just beyond the hedge. They must have heard me as I was puffing and blowing like a steam train at full pelt..... as I got to the pig pen No 12 let out the longest and loudest fart I have heard in many a month, and immediately afterwards I could hear the person that was walking the dogs tut VERY pointedly.

I was too embarrassed to explain to "disgusted of Trelawnyd" that it was not me that broke wind quite so vociferously but the pig, but that's obviously what they thought!

Another nail in my social coffin me thinks

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Today's post was going to be centred around the knotty subject of canine mastubation but a small medical emergency with an out-of-date bag of rice noodles seems to have started the day on somewhat of a bitter sweet note.

Monday morning is a recycling morning.
The chicken carcass from Sunday lunch, left over vegetables,  old bits of bread, any old shite from the fridge are all mixed together in a bucket or a bowl and the slop fed to the animals on the field.
Today's leftovers were augmented by a pile of undigested cat food ( thrown up by Albert) a French stick someone had thoughtfully left on the back garden wall and a bag of out-of-date rice noodles.
I took the offerings over to the field and dumped them on the  ground as the hens, geese , turkey and sheep galloped over to bolt down the food and had just turned back to the cottage ( to enjoy my  first cup of coffee of the day) when I noticed a wide eyed Camilla staggering around strangely with a large clump of rice noodles hanging out of the side of her open beak.
She was choking .
Now I've only ever done the Heimlich Manoeuvre once in mylife and that was when an elderly food driven psychiatric patient tried to eat a whole tin of apricots in syrup in one glug and that was back in 1987, so I can't at all call myself an expert, but I jumped into the emergency situation with unexpected gusto and grabbed Camilla from behind.
I tipped her upside down, shook her three times and squeezed her smartly around the middle as if I was playing a grey and white set of bagpipes.
Camilla coughed, took one deep breath and then farted incredibly loudly as I squeezed her again to make sure all the tubes were clear.
It was only after I had put her down when I realised that the noodles had been shifted and that I was covered in around a litre of bright green watery shit.

And so , let that be a lesion to you all , if you ever have to do the Heimlich Manoeuvre on a goose..make sure it's arse is pointing away from you....

Camilla after her ordeal

I'll leave you with this photo of Meg and Winnie

It's a rare shot...

You have to remember that Meg hates Winnie

Winnie is ambivalent to Meg

So this photo made me smile....

Im off for a bath

UFO

In springtime, every spring time, Camilla, the Canada Goose tries to fly.
I don't  know if it is just a seasonal exuberance that makes her take to her wings,
But what I do knows is, that despite a natural ability that could take her a quarter the way across the globe all she manages to do is to soar a  hundred feet or so up into the air before crashing and burning into the neighbours' field.
Where flying is concerned
Camilla has all the natural grace of a skateboarding Winifred.

It's a case flap wings like a loon,
Somehow catch a cross wind coming from the east
And it's up and off .
Three times yesterday I had to traipse over the sheep fields to retrieve her.
And three times Camilla just stood there shaking her beautiful head, stunned and shocked at hitting the wet grass at twenty five miles an hour.

Her last flight was observed by neighbour John, who was busy constructing a home made boat in his drive.after she had honked her way by him, he called over to me and pointed out the direction the ungainly goose had disappeared into......
I had taken twenty or so steps down the lane when I heard Graham , the Shepherd, shout out from his supervisory position above his lambing pens
It was obvious to all that Camilla's third flight was as precarious as all of the others

All Graham yelled was a somewhat sarcastic and slightly excitable World War Two-esque warning of
" INCOMING!!"

Updated Stories

I am at my brother's house.....everything is silent except for the creepy "pitter patter" of rats in the ceiling space. Poison has been laid but there seems to be one or two hardly little buggers still alive up there........
It's all very Repulsion esque

Anyhow thought I would update you on a few previous story characters...sometimes I do rabbit on about this waif and that stray only never to refer to them again..so I thought I would take the opportunity to "catch up" so to speak....
Mind you perhaps this catch up camouflages the fact that I perhaps have not got anything that interesting to say

1. Beatrice

Remember the "lassie Come Home" story of Beatrice, the Rhode Island Red who suffered a stroke? Her struggle to get back to her coop at dusk even when partially paralysed, could have made even Jeremy Paxman weep, so against my better judgement I kept her, and set her up in a small broody box in view of all the hens on the field.
Well that was a couple of weeks ago, and against all odds Beatrice is still with us.
She still cannot walk properly, but is starting to stand by herself  albeit rather haphazardly and eats like the proverbial pig.
Disabled as she is, I am afraid she will always have to be separated from the other hens who will undoubtedly kill her if she returns.


2 The Dumped Geese (Tom, Elizabeth & Anon)

Bloody hell these three charity cases remain hard work, but after a good bath, some intensive feeding up and some strict behavioural therapy, the geese that were abandoned on the 29th of September have settled down finally onto a noisy but generally harmless family group.
The old gander still rants on a tad, so I have called him Tom . The goose, his mate ( the brown and white) looks an old girl who still retains some pluck so I have called her Elizabeth....the juvenile I have not named as he/she is destined for the pot if I am unable to re-home them


3 Phyllis

Remember Phyllis Diller?
The bald hysterical bantam that had been shagged and bullied almost to death?
Well as you can see, some of her feathers have returned and she is laying now, secure and fairly happy in her run with the laid back-as-a-piece-of-cardboard Jane.
Having said this her nerves still seem somewhat frazzled at times, which, I am sure, a long course of Valium would help with...yeap she still has a face only a mother could love.


4 Camilla

Camilla and the orphaned Badger way back in June

Now a fully grown Canada Goose, Camilla has left her shed mate, (the little orphan cockerel Badger) to finally join in with the field's resident geese in their own house.
She remains a gentle, doe eyed soul, who is not afraid to resort to her gosling day habit of taking corn from my hand, and is perhaps one of the most beautiful animals on the field.
Little Badger is doing very well also. After a little bit of fretting when Camilla finally realised that she was indeed a goose, he has been put in charge of his own hen house with 12 of his own hens to fuss over. Still very much a baby, Badger has not quite got into the habit of "covering" his girls just yet, preferring to spend his day following them around like a teenage saddo, but he is healthy, happy and will I am sure take over the running of the field when old Stanley becomes too old.


So there you have it, four success stories....c/o Jonney's farm.....

A Very Trelawnyd Funeral and Camilla's First Flight

Forgive this second blog which supplements my Mary Berry love fest
I bumped into Auntie Gladys in the village at 10.20 am when I was out with the dogs. she was walking down towards the church and she reminded me that today was Tommy 'Gop's' funeral day Tommy  Gop was a much respected farmer from the village. He farmed the prestigious Gop farm for many years, a farm that dominates the approach to Trelawnyd from the West.
Gladys is an old hand at funerals, especially farmers' services, and so she quite wisely  had planned to arrive over an hour before the service was to start.
This is not as bizarre as it sounds, for at the very same time, a whole gaggle of villagers were making their way down to the church to make sure they managed to get into the Church.....an hour later over seventy people were sheltering against the south wall of the Church out of the gale force winds.
As the Church bell rang out, I took this brief video, before I took my place by the graveyard fence to give my respects to the arriving family. You can tell just how windy it has been today, if you look carefully you can see one of the hen house roofs lying messily on the ground.

The wind increased in it's intensity throughout the day, so much so, that when I started to round up the geese as the light started to fade, a sudden sharp gust of wind caught Camilla's outstretched wings and the Canada goose took off like a remote controlled plane.
Now Camilla is the only animal on the field that has the capacity for self propelling flight, she has never done so because her flock are domesticated geese which have lost their free flying abilities, so her sudden 'freedom' was I suppose as much as a shock to her than it was for me.
Up she went, flapping and panicking to perhaps sixty or seventy feet, before another few gusts of wind buffeted her away over the riding stable fields.
I chased after her.
She glided downwards for a bit, got caught by another gust then after shaving some hawthorn hedging she clipped a telephone line that crossed the field and crashed heavily to the ground where she lay still.
I was convinced she was dead, and galloped through the horsefield like a mad Alec until I reached her.
She lay with her eyes open, and was very still, but she was very much alive and blinked at me with a somewhat surprised look on her face.
I wrapped her in my coat and carried her back to the field where the rest of her little flock honked noisily at me as I placed her inside the goose house to recover.
Out of all of my field animals, the geese are perhaps my favourites...I couldn't quite bare it if I lost one to a freak gust of wind.
A funeral and a wayward goose...
A normal Wednesday.....not.

A Sweet Natured Goose

Recently I have been debating whether or not Camilla, the Canada Goose is indeed a Charles.....

That general debate is now at an end, for she has now made a nest in which has been deposited several large white oval eggs.

Her eggs, I am presuming, are not fertile, for I have not seen Russell mating with her as he has done in his normal noisy way, with Winnie and Jo. And so, I need to remove them regularly in an effort to stop Camilla going overly broody.

Sitting geese can be terribly aggressive.

They are big powerful birds which can inflict a painful bite when they have a mind to, and so I have been somewhat cautious when retrieving her eggs. 

But so far, apart from the odd half hearted hiss, Camilla has been a real sweetie....with her big black eyes watching my every move, she always ambles gently to one side, so I can reach into the nest.

Her only show of bad humour this morning was a brief  and perfunctory  pull at the  band of my underpants when I bent over......

And before you all ask

Yes..they were clean on

Making Your Own Traditions....Camilla.....and the Baby Jesus

Sorrel leaves today. It has become a little bit of a tradition that I take her to the train. It is also a little tradition of mine to prepare her some sandwiches and cake to eat on the journey back to Kent.
A Lunch wrapped in brown paper, tied up with string.
It's a silly little tradition, but there it is, fixed and unchanging over the years that we have known each other.
On the home front, thoughts are turning to babies

Camilla the Canada Goose has now taken up residence in the duck house and with a bit of help from me, now has a large collection of eggs laid by her and the other geese on which she will finally settle.
At the moment she spends much of her time patrolling her borders,hissing gently at passing hens, only disappearing into her chalet from time to time to rearrange her eggs.
She is the sweetest of creatures.

And that leaves me to tell you about The Baby Jesus. Remember him?
Well the single chick that hatched on Easter Sunday is doing fine and is the apple of his mother's eye

Mothers and sons eh?

Goose Gone

For those that don't know, I have four geese living in the Ukrainian village and they make for a tight knit little flock of which I am exceedingly fond.
A few years ago now , I bought two goose eggs from ebay and incubated both successfully in the garden shed. Over a period of two days both hatched with some difficulty, and although one grey gosling injured her ŵing during the hatching process both babies thrived.
I named them Winnie and Jo.
A year or so later Camilla arrived all the way from Kent . She was found abandoned  and was considered to be a rather large and ungainly duckling. Camilla , as it turned out grew into a beautiful Canada goose.
The only gander in the group was another waif. He was rather a sad character who had been bullied by a larger and more aggressive male in the back garden of a chap from a nearby town. He arrived sat quietly inside a sports bag and has remained a gentle little soul ever since.
I called him Russell.
The group of four are noisy but for geese, incredibly good natured birds.

Jo, vocal and distant again this morning

Last night Jo went missing, at locking up time . The three other geese stood quietly at the goose house door and called for her but there was no answer from the field or from the livery stables beyond. I searched the hedges and nettle patches for her, just in case she had made herself a nest, but I knew nesting time is now over.
I mooched for over an hour but there was no sign of her and I could feel my bottom lip quiver just a bit when I gave up the search.
I finally went to bed after midnight but couldn't settle so I put on my head touch marshalled Winnie and William ( George was asleep in bed) and went out on the field then down the lane  to look for her.
We walked a few hundred yards to the Felin, at the bottom of the little valley behind the cottage and from a good distance by the old Mill house , I could see two eyes reflecting one after another in the light of my torch from the tall grass at the side of the road.

I called and recieved a small honk back .
It was bleeding like the final scene of Lassie Come home .

I carried Jo all the way back to the field , and it was the first time she had let me touch her since she was a gosling. She sat still and well behaved tucked firmly up underneath my arm
I've said it before and no doubt I will say it again......
But these animals will be the effin death of me

Pastures New

This morning I recieved an email from a smallholder from Gwynedd . He told me that Camilla Parker Bowles and her " sisters" were doing very well indeed.
The email was a welcomed one, but it did twang the heart strings just a little.

Several weeks ago the geese left the Ukrainian village for pastures new.
I didn't blog about this fact , for it was rather a sad time.

It was a hard decision to make, but with the hens' removal to the safety of barn life and under the shadow of avian flu I finally made the decision that the geese had to be found a new home.
And I wanted total control over this change.
This year I retire from work. The Prof's work could and probably will change to pastures new and we also have the opportunity to travel a little more, and so I wanted the girls on a farm with care 24/7.
I " interviewed" several interested parties and eventually chose a small holder from the back-and-beyond in deepest Wales. He is an interesting character as he is good with animals and fairly poor with people.
He was also as poor as a church mouse,as it was evident that his income went on animal care and not designer clothing!
It was this quiet dedication that allowed me to make that final decision.
Now Camilla has the space to fly without risks of crash landing on the nearest bin lorry. The group now have a safe haven with a pond and a new owner who only leaves the farm to to the weeks' shopping.

I still miss the geese but I am so happy they are settled in their new home.
Was it actually seven years ago when they arrived?