Howling at the Moon and pecking order changes within the dog pack

The Belles of St Trinians all seem to be doing fine. They were let out yesterday morning and immediately formed themselves into a tight knit little group on the field borders.
I brought them their own feeder (with wormer and vitamins) and left them fresh water ( with the magic  ingredient of apple cider vinegar) and hoped that they would  settled in without a problem.
Rescue hens like these scrappy birds can be bullied terribly by an existing flock, so the quicker they find their feet, the better, and apart from a few minor skirmishes with the bad tempered Angostura....the ten new girls coped well with their first day

Mind you, I wounder what they made of my , somewhat over-the-top reaction when I was pushed to the absolute limit by the marauding starling horde later in the afternoon.
Hundreds of the little buggers had been sitting patiently in the Churchyard elms for most of the day as I pottered back and forth getting the field ready for the new onslaught of bad weather which is due on Saturday and when I turned my back  the feeders went literally black with starling bodies stuffing their fat little faces with expensive layers pellets!
Seven times I scared the starlings away and seven times they retreated to the elms briefly before swooping down again when I had turned my back. 
I moved the feeder.....still they returned
I Placed the solar radio on top of the feeder......still they returned
I stationed George to watch over the feed.......STILL they returned!!!  
By the umpteenth "raid" I completely lost my cool and as the Wiley bastards sat in the trees laughing at me, I started to hurl the whole collection of tin feeding bowls up into the Elms whilst yelling "FUCK OFF ( first bowl) YOU NASTY ( next bowl!)  SHITTY ( next bowl) LITTLE (enamel bowl!) GOB SHITE(?)-final bowl)..........  BIRDS!!!!!" (Ran out of bowls so I lobbed a plastic rake!!!)
If you are reading this ( and I am talking about the two middle aged ladies tending a grave in the new Graveyard)
I apologise for my foul mouthed tirade and behaviour!!!

Today the weather has closed in and the freezing rain and bluster winds have returned....I am trying to get the cottage in order as Nuala ( my best friend from London) is due for a visit tomorrow- and I have to try to get rid of the cottage's doggy smells before she arrives.
Each dog needs a bath and I am just pondering just how I will carry a 24 kilo bulldog upstairs!

Meg before the scrap

  
To add to the day's events, Meg and Constance have just decided to thrash out their female pecking order positions within the household.
The result was inevitable.....slight neurotic Welsh terrier versus  quietly assertive mountain of female bulldog.....
All I heard was a mass of squealing and a few frantic barks, a couple of growls and then complete silence.
I walked into the kitchen to see  a bored looking Constance standing over Meg who had been rolled onto her back.
The bulldog had used her considerable weight to pin Meg to the floor and was not going ANYWHERE!
I left them to it. and made a cup of coffee.
Neither bitch moved.
I stepped over them and sat at the kitchen table to watch what was going on.
Neither bitch moved.
George ambled over to have a sniff at both of them, and still neither bitch moved.
Then Meg tried to kick Constance off and without any fuss Constance flattened her to the floor even more.
I left them to it.......
Ten minutes later, they still remained locked together. So I grabbed the leads and called all the  dogs for their walk.
Out trotted William and George followed by a rather relieved Meg and a quietly victorious Constance......
The bulldog is now alpha female and second in command to the benign William! 

Christmas disaster

Today, I will defy any of the right wing,asylum hating newspapers not to hang their heads in some sort of shame, when they reported the awful events on Christmas Island today.
The boat load of Middle Eastern men, women and children, that were flung to their deaths in the stormy waters of the Indian Ocean, were chancing their lives in an epic journey to seek a better existence half way around the globe from their poor homelands.
Desperate and  daringly hopeful, they took their chances in a world full of apathy and tried to steer their own destiny to something more than what they were born to.
....and the Daily Mail likes to call these people  spongers, wasters and scum......

Blog for Tom

Tom over at http://stephensonlifestyle.blogspot.com/ wondered if we were going to eat Boris  this Christmas!
I thought that I would give him and newer blog readers a snippit of the background of this lovable turkey stag , which will perhaps answer Tomas' question with a huge and emphatic NO!

One weekend , a couple of years ago I worked on ITU with an elderly lady that was seriously ill. She was in fact in the twilight of her life and as her life ebbed away , I had the opportunity to chat about her history in the hills in and around the market town of Denbigh!
This lady ( I will call her Menna) was a farmers wife for 57 years. We talked for hours about hens and ducks and sheep and cows......and before I left my last nursing shift with her, I remember sharing the fact that I always wanted to have a turkey of my own!!!
The lady was transferred from intensive care to a general ward. And she  sadly died a day or so later.....but two weeks later I received a phone call from her daughter stating that she had  a gift for me, which had been "arranged" by her mother when she was a patient with us 
The gift was two turkey poults. Tiny and so very sweet at 4 weeks old.... and  the stag, which turned out to be the huge and bombastic Boris is still with me today............and will remain with me for many years to come

Having an adaptable Christmas

We are having an "adaptable" Christmas....
I am working Christmas Eve on nights and have given the family an open invitation to come to us for Christmas lunch.....with my elder Brother being ill, he and my sister in law do not really know what they can do on the day..so my eldest sister Ann had the idea of a sort of peripatetic Christmas dinner kind of plan......if my brother is up to it we will still host lunch here.....if there is other sudden materialising guests then Ann ( who has more space and no dogs!) will do the honours....if Andrew wants....we can also bring Christmas to him up at his farmhouse in the country!.....in any case the whole meal has been organised!!!
Chris and I will "do" the turkey and a pudding....twin sister Janet is sorting out all the veg and other bits and Ann will be sorting out starters,and nibbles and the like....between us every box has been ticked and agreed upon.
My brother and his wife have been through an emotional roller coaster since he was diagnosed with progressive Bulbar Palsy over a year ago now  ( Bulbar palsy is a version of motor neurone disease)....I know only too well that the constant contact with a health care system which is often frustrating and repetitive in its nature can be as exhausting and as hard work as dealing with the disease itself, so both of them need not to worry themselves with any of the unnecessary stress that Christmas can inflict.......
It is our job to do this 

The Motor Neurone Association Christmas Card

 Anyhow, it has been a day for Christmas card sending and delivering!
I called down to Prestatyn and dropped off a load of family cards and collected some from both sisters!
I had to smile as Janet, Ann and I all had sent each other EXACTLY the same Christmas card without knowing it. ....we had, each of us sent away for the Motor Neurone disease Association Charity cards......and apparently the MNDA has completely run out of this cat-in-the-snow design!
The power of good taste and a cheque book eh?

This afternoon Constance and I delivered the village cards.( the extra exercise has increased her flatulence ten fold by the way!)-so we cut quite a dash....me an my wellies and woolly hat.and .her with a machine gun set of farts! 
..The Village Memorial Hall has set up a Christmas tree in the centre of the village.,.....making Trelawnyd look rather sweet and festive..........for the first time this December, I am feeling just a little Christmasy

The Belles of St. Trinian's

 

This afternoon I recieved a phone call from a guy who said he had 10 hens he wanted to rehome. He made some generalised excuses about his dog being a threat to his birds and sounded so in need of "getting rid" that I agreed to drive over to his village immediately to see what I could do.

As it turned out, the young bog standard hybrids were a gift to a child, who had all but lost interest in them, and I very nearly lost my temper when I crept into a "converted "wendy house" that had doubled as a make shift hen house. Inside  ten skinny birds crowded around me like tame puppies. They were tame because they were starving and wanted food, and not because they had been hand reared..and I was quick to note that the house had no water or food laid out for them. There were no perches, straw filled nest boxes or even any sawdust in the shed...and the floor was three inches deep in wet , shit impregnated shavings which looked remarkably like porridge.   The whole place was disgusting.

The  man noticed my face and thinking that I was not impressed with the birds rather than their surroundings he asked if I would take the hens off his hands.........looking at the scruffy bunch, I decided to not to get angry and simply said " yes, I will take the lot!"

It took 30 seconds to catch the hens and put them into Constance's cage in the back of the car. Within half an hour I had fed them properly ( 4 bowls of corn and pellets!!!! I couldn't literally pour the feed quick enough) then bedded them down snugly- 6 in the runner duck house ( the three remaining ducks will be housed with the older ducks) and the remaining 4 in the large hen house with the gentle young purebreeds ..........

I have nicknamed the new girls The Belles of St. Trinian's as their scruffy appearance reminds me of the the 1954 unkempt schoolgirls (above) I think they will do fine...........

I am now up to 100 animals!!!

Monday, Monday!!!!

Angostura, the last bird standing

The clouds of starlings are back and so, indeed am I!
It sounds strange but after a weekend of nursing within the insulated and aseptic bubble of Intensive care, it was lovely to be back out on the field this morning,
As usual I did my customary roll call, and was relieved to see that all the animals were present and correct. I did have a slight wobble as Angostura (the donated guinea hen) was not in her usual hen house at opening up time but I did find the bad tempered bird sat comfortably in one of the nesting boxes, sat in unseasonal stillness upon a single egg!
Fair dos to Chris, who has looked after everyone very well for the past 48 hours......it is not an easy job, slopping out the water feeders in freezing weather when your heart really isn't in it...especially when you are being stalked by a somewhat psychotic stag turkey.

The intense hatred Boris has for Chris is long standing and somewhat baffling! Every time Chris is around , Boris' black little eyes seem to darken just that little bit more and quietly and with purpose he will glide into a position where an ambush attack is possible like a galleon in full sail.
Usually Chris can now preempt these challenges with a bit of fancy footwork , but over three years this dislike of everyone that is NOT ME, has continued and flourished.
Islwyn (the guy that taught me to dry stone wall) is another local that Boris has a "thing" for, and even I get the occasional peck when the old turkey is an a particularly bad mood or indeed when he mistakes me for Chris.

This morning, despite the wet grass, I sat cross legged in the turkey enclosure and shared my bagel with him, as he stood rattling his feather to impress me......it was  something I have not done for an age......
In the "quietness" of the village field.....it was lovely to force the intensive care monitor alarms of the last two days,right out of my head.......

Matt Cardle....... well done my son

Today's shift was slightly better.
Still as front line nurses we see the vulnerable and the sick and with them are all of their relatives and friends,. battling the demons and the fears all of their own.....so after a weekend of it...it was nice to come home to a rather nice beef bourguignon and the sweet frivolity of the x factor final.
Mind you , I hate results shows...
They stress me out.....
I took the dogs out for their evening "pee" in an effort to miss the final countdown and got my timing all wrong and arrived back in the living room just in time for the "reading of the envelope"
Bugger me....
He Won...!..........and .It was all very Hollywood!!!!!!!! lots of tears (his not mine) and a worthy other finalist in the graceful Rebecca!....I am finally happy that the whole shebang is now over with!
Its been exhausting!!!!!

Sad Soup

It's been a long shift
At tea time, I did a favour for one of my fellow nurses and helped her patient, an elderly gentleman I did not know, to eat his soup.
In my experience , it is at these little "intimate" times that people often impart the biggest and most important snippets of themselves and after battling with his lunch the obviously wearied  man,turned his head into his pillow with closed eyes and said "I just want to go to sleep and not wake up again"
He wanted no real platitude to this statement, I think he just wanted to share what he was thinking and all I could really do was to reply
"That is an awfully sad thing to say" 
...and it was.......
......another 13 hour shift tomorrow