Watership Down

Well Roland is hanging on in there. His back leg has what I suspect to be some nerve damage, and is looking pretty useless, but in general baby rabbit terms , he looks quite bright and indeed feisty.
( you can tell this by the way I have him in a rather firm strangle hold in the above photo)
If it wasn't for his gammy leg, I would have released him by now...so I suspect his only chance will be a wildlife rescue centre.
I will keep him in the spare hen house for a few more days....to see how he improves
He has just started to eat now, cabbage leaves,grass, stale bread with an occasional garnish of green grapes!

In 1972 Richard Adams wrote the wonderful Watership down which was, ( for those few that dont know) an non patronising, mature adventure story featuring a wild group of rabbits and their search for a new home.
I was eleven when I first read it, and I enjoyed the novel as much then as I did last year when I re read it. Like To kill a Mockingbird , it is one of those rare reads that can be enjoyed by adults and children alike
There is no Internet " data" to support this, but I suspect that rabbit sales in the early 1970s soared after Watership Down's publication. On reflection, it surprises me that I never bought one.....after all I adored the novel with a passion. Having said that, I did have several guinea pigs, numerous shoals of tropical fish, a gaggle of red eared terrapins and a large sweet jar full of stick insects to look after, so rabbits, were not a high need on my agenda
Filled with rabbit nostalgia, I aim to dig out my old copy of Adams' novel today and I will start it on my break at work tonight.
If you have not read it....please do so......it's a cracking tale ........a bit like game of thrones with fluffy bits.

Going on............

Things that I have noticed that we don't see much of any more

Wasps
Little Boys running around in gangs.
Hedgehogs
Brown Suits
Moustaches
Square ice cream in a wafer
Rain hats
Little red spiders on hot paving stones
Old lady bloomers
Doilies
High Tea
Headscarves
Typewriters
Fishmongers
House martins
Cinzano
Wooden ball car seats
Vicars in the street
Sugar puffs
Personal, hand written letters
Dirty postcards
Children's dens in the countryside
White dog poo

....And What we see too much of?

Old men in sportswear
Fat people ( me included)
The institutionalised unwell ( people with pseudo beck problems and sticks)
Cars
Bad Tattoos
Common people
Flesh
Litter
Modern parents
4 x 4 s
Mobile phones
Charity shops
Big print wallpaper

I could go on

Series 4

I have nearly wet my pants

Roland

We have not suffered a " rodent incident" for a good while now.
The reason for that is the simple fact that Albert eats his kills rather than spending the effort to drag the baby rabbits across the lane and up into the cottage in order to present them to his large extended family.
Young rabbits are saving me a fortune in felix meaty chunks
Yesterday morning, that went all tits up.
I had just sneaked back to bed for a crafty ten minutes after taking Chris to Prestatyn for the early train when I felt Albert jump onto the bed. Some inner sense told me that something was afoot, and so when I opened my eyes I wasn't that surprised to see Albert standing there, with his tail swishing from side to side.
In his mouth was a small struggling rabbit, blood seeping from a large wound on a back leg.
All was calm.......
Then...................
Albert spat the baby out it in the centre of the group of sleeping terriers, and swiped at it with his paw.
The rabbit screamed.
And the dogs hit the ceiling.
I have had years of this sort of thing to cope with, so I would like to think I was cool as a cucumber when hysteria breaks out amid the ranks. As the dogs , with their eyes wide as saucers bounced into action I quickly flipped the corner of the duvet over, and the rabbit effectively disappeared from view.
Now, retrieving an injured rabbit from under a duvet is not as easy as one might think , especially when a pack of dogs are screaming around the floorboards but I finally managed to subdue the little fella by wrapping him up in a pair of discarded underpants before taking him into the bathroom to give him the once over.
Apart from a nasty leg wound, I could see no other injuries, so I cleaned him up, sprayed antibacterial spray into his wound and popped him into a spare hen house with food water and silence.

Wild animals do poorly after a cat attack. Their wounds become infected very quickly  and they can die of shock literally minutes after being caught, so when I checked on the baby this morning , I half expected to see a small , hard dead rabbit crouched in the corner of the spare hen house
This is what I saw

His back leg is trailing somewhat , but he's still hanging on in there.

I have nicknamed him Roland.

Cool Off/ Cool Down

Oh dear... I was all a bit gloomy this morning, was I not?
Pulled myself up by the proverbial bra straps , however, this afternoon and got stuck in to weeding the garden.
It's hot... But I am stopping short with all this ". Heat wave hysteria" from the media.....old people with bad chests always die in hot weather......it's Darwin in action so to speak!

A massive delivery lorry got stuck in the lane outside the cottage this morning....I did my King Canute thing and stood firmly in front of it and demanded that the driver back up the half mile or so to the slightly larger B road. The driver was a burly, unsmiling scouser who tried to bluff his way past the cottage in the foolish assumption that he could squeeze by, but I was in no mood for idiocy ( heat makes me feisty) and So started to get all thin lipped and difficult ( a sure sign my blood pressure is up) . The scouser wisely backed down and reversed away down the lane with me watching the procedure..hands on hips........another small victory for the old lady of Trelawnyd.

Anyhow I will leave you all with some heat wave photos.... I am off to sponge down my chickens

Bosoms in the heat

The view from the field to the south

Shade is at a premium

In the cool of the living room

Old Dog

Dogs have no concept of ageing.
Arthritic joints, a slowness of gait, the slight blueness in the eyes an intolerance to silly games
They are all just slightly confusing things that just happen to them .
But they are things that break your  heart when you, as an owner realise that they are there.
Old dogs have no idea of their impending mortality
Only we do.
And like I said
That realisation can break your heart

I Wish

I saw this on http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/
It did make me smile

" I'm A Good Girl, I am" ........and a note of thanks...

Yesterday I showed, what I thought to be a remarkable amount of self control. I went to see an animal in need of a new home and came back empty handed, It was a case of head ruling the heart.

I drove a few miles down the coast, and on one of the hottest days of the year I met up with a four and a half year old bulldog bitch called Millie.

She was a delightful character. Lively, affectionate, needy, and totally adorable, and so just as I could feel my objective grey cells wavering, I mentally started to list the more challenging aspects of Millie's condition. 

At nearly five, she was still not housetrained. She was suffering from two eye conditions ( cherry eye and entropion) and her interaction with a bouncy, screaming little chihuahua was just a little too sparky for my liking.

 Our old bitch Meg, is sparky enough, for one household to cope with

With a heavy heart, I made my decision mentally then and there, with a fat bulldog bitch bouncing all over my head. 

And I drove away knowing that I had done the right thing

Hey ho.

Anyhow...on a brighter side, my collection of items for the flower show and for the arts stall and raffle on my Open day , seems to be growing rapidly. The kindness of my fellow bloggers in donating these items is just phenomenal as on a daily basis,another package arrives from another small corner of the globe.

Thank you all so very much. The items received for my open day will help raise money for both St Michael's Church here in Trelawnyd and for Marie Curie cancer Care.