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post was going to be centred around the knotty subject of canine mastubation but a small medical emergency with an out-of-date bag of rice noodles seems to have started the day on somewhat of a bitter sweet note.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cat food ( thrown up by Albert) a French stick someone had thoughtfully left on the back garden wall and a bag of out-of-date rice noodles.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

Goose Feet

Jo, this morning,braving the snow

 note Russell the gander and Camilla sitting in the lurid purple paddling pool

Jo is the gentlest of all the geese, she always looks as though she's smiling

If I was a bird, I am sure I'd be a land locked goose for a goose out of water is an incredibly clumsy creature.
Chris watched me trying to get my socks on the morning then laughed when he saw me trying to force two feet into one trouser leg hole.
" I've never met such an ungainly individual " he said with all of the insight of being a seni professional dancer in his teenage years.
I don't think Chris has ever fallen over by accident......ever!
I have fallen over twice today already
and it's only 10.30 in the morning........
Walking geese are always tripping over things. I think it's a product of not being able to see their feet.
I can see my feet and I still went arse over tit....
TWICE

I blame the snow.......

P

The South West view from the village

Ps
Animal update:-
Winnie is now more or less walking normally..though is playing ultra diva when asked to sleep in her usual crate
Phyllis Diller is back to normal after her recent cat attack
Bingley has needed his individual portion of car food today to fight away the cold.

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

Dirty Monday

Monday is a " dirty day"
It's the day I clean out the duck and the goose house.
A foul job if ever there was one.
I am bathing the dogs today too which is another grotty job.
Waterfowl and terriers.......mucky little buggers.
Well I can't beat yesterday's blog entry so I will leave you with a photo of Camilla Parker Bowles and Jo ( both of whom have a habit of following me when I clean ) and a brief snippet of " news" which amused me this morning.

When I walked around Bron Haul with the dogs I spied a British Teliccom engineer leaving one of the pensioner bungalows. Apparantly he was fixing problems caused by the recent electrical storm we had recently . Olwen Dilworth came out of her bungalow and called
" I'm not paying 120 Pounds!" she sang out sweetly
" There's nothing wrong with my box!"
Well it amused me

Camilla P.B and Jo

And I'll leave you with this little thought

Off for a bath

" Stealing flowers" and How To Tame An Animal

Village tongues may be clacking this morning as yesterday, I was seen leaving Pat ( the animal helper's) house with a large bunch of garden flowers. Pat is on a holiday cruise , so I am watering her tomatoes everyday.......the flowers I had permission to remove.....
I thought I'd just get that straight.
Anyhow,
Last week, at the animal wholesales, I bumped into Bunty the lesbian smallholder from Llanfair
Talhalarn. I was buying layers pellets , she was looking for rat poison. Though part of me thought that Bunty didn't really need poison to kill anything. She always looks as though she could strangle a hippo with only one hand.
I asked her how the geese were, the ones that she bought from me last year.
" the snotty bastards are still keeping their distance" Bunty moaned " I still can't tame them"
I didn't have the heart to tell her, that with her big booming voice, she was never likely to...ever.
Animals need the Penelope Wilton approach rather than the Brian Blessed

There are several rules that need to be followed where the taming of animals are concerned

1. You need to move slowly at first and get on with doing quiet routine jobs around them without looking at the animal you want to tame.
2. If you have jobs or zombie games to play on the ipad, sit down near the animal and keep quietly busy. The animal invariably will come towards you to give you the " once over". When they do approach talk to the animals quietly. This works very well with geese and sheep who are naturally curious...if you are up for it.....lie down in the field face down ( although don't do this with pigs!)
3. Use food bribery using favourite food stuffs.  Cheap white bread is nectar ,to sheep and geese and turkey's and hens adore teats of dog food. Always leave the animals " wanting more" use the same feed bucket or bowl every day and use a consistent animal call to " Marshall the troops" 
4. Try not to dress in different clothes and hats . Consistency is the key.
5.  Never try too hard.

Things you mustn't do when taming animals

1. Don't have a crafty piss when geese are about beak height is invariably at willy height
2. Never scream like a girl in the vicinity of potentially hysterical Indian runner ducks
3. Never hold an animal tentatively. Most animals will go " limp" if you hold them firmly
4. Keep small screaming children and toddlers locked up in a cage if possible. 

Irene and Sylvia will now eat corn out of my hand and do so every morning 

Bingley will sit on my lap for a taste of dog food

Camilla, has a natural reticence with people but will allow herself to be picked up

New cockerel  " Capaldi" is a work in progress

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?

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!!"

Cloud Watching

Today I managed to indulge myself in the first of this year's cloud watching moments.

It's been far too wet and cold all winter to be rolling about on the grass

But today, although it remains a little chilly,

It was sunny enough for me to lie down for a few minutes and stare up to the sky.

The neighbours are well used to see me prostrate on the ground in fine weather

They no longer worry about it.

However Camilla did find my corpse like body rather intriguing 

She wandered gently over, chunnering quietly to herself

And stood with her head turned quizzically  like this for a good while......

regarding me carefully as I watched the clouds blow merrily by

Bodnant Welsh Food

Now, there is nothing that pleases a couple of old poofs more in this world  than a classy venue.
Give us the clean, expensive lines of a National trust tea rooms or the sleekly clean crispness of the Ritz cafe ( yes I have been! And in a clean pair of trousers too!).... And we will wander around with smiles on our faces and a spring in our step
Unfortunately in Wales , these venues are rare as a shy bulldog, so when they do surface, we get excited as Tom Stephenson at a Germaine Greer lecture.
It was St David's day here in Wales yesterday, so we drove over to the Conwy Valley to visit Furnace Farm, the Bodnant Centre for Welsh Food.

Lovingly restored, the seventeen century farm boasts a restaurant, tea rooms, farm shop, cookery school,wine shop and bee centre. It's all slightly aseptic, but it's undeniably and reassuringly expensive and classy
We ate cawl in the cafe ( cawl is a rustic Welsh stew) and I came over all unnecessary when I spied a massive pile of BLACK PUDDING SCOTCH EGGS  in the farm shop. At 2£'each , they proved to be somewhat of an extravagance , but they were BLEEDING WORTH IT!
Never has this old poof tasted anything better!
Scotch eggs of the gods!

Hey ho

Good old Camilla knocking back the scotch eggs at the opening of Bodnant food a year back

" The Bastards"

The Bastards

Meet " The Bastards"
These two young and badly behaved lodgers arrived just after Christmas and will be guests on the field until sometime in February. They are the property of the owner of a local bed & breakfast, who is off to Malaysia for a month. I didn't know him from Adam when he turned up with the sob story of not having a goose sitter, but true to form, I accepted the challenge, even though the new bees are two of the most narky, bad tempered birds that I have ever had the misfortune to meet.
Ever since they arrived the resident flock of geese, the sheep and a few of the older, slower hens have been pecked,intimidated and bullied , so much so That I have had to employ a daily regime of behavior modification in order to  assert my dominance over the pair, who think nothing of slipping an orange beak down the crack of your underpants in order to grab a pound of flesh when you are bending over a feed bucket!

So, every morning I will drag each bird out of their house. Take a firm hold of their neck and wings, then will take a walk around the field with the bird tightly tucked underneath my armpit.
It's an old trick that can tame an aggressive cockerel, for after a while, you can actually feel the bird " relax" a sign that it has accepted you are the boss.
It's labour intensive...but effective.
And so, every morning I look like a strange Scot playing a set of white bagpipes around the field, as " The Bastards" are hopefully transformed from evil devil birds to a pair of twittering canaries .
Having said this, I was goosed in the knackers rather violently only this morning, when I dropped my guard opening up the goose house......

Slowly slowly catchy monkey.

The gentle and well behaved resident  flock
Winnie, the graceful and rather beautiful Camilla , Russell and Jo

Opera Shopping

My favourite Supermarket

( I was given a scotch egg from Waitrose by Camilla's former owner's daughter today

9/10). It was lovely.

Anyhow I did enjoy this little Opera interlude too!

Thanks Megan

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

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

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

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

According to Diane...........

Humn on reflection?

It's only a quick blog today I have been extra busy and have not even had my usual ' breakfast blog moment' with a cup of milicarno as yet : the wind has demolished the duck house during the morning, which gave the hysterical runners something else to get their slimlined knickers in a twist about and

I have spent most of the morning repairing it, then had to go down to Prestatyn to walk my sister's dog before walking my own in between preparing supper and retrieving Camilla from the riding stables field yet again.

The gale force wind has unsettled her, even though her dreadful crash landing of yesterday has not quite put her off from spreading her wings, so to speak. I wouldn't mind as much if she had the sense to fly back home.... But she's a classy Canadian gal ( like so many are) and prefers to be carried back home, wrapped in an old woollen overcoat.

Anyhow I have 2 minutes or so before I go out to meet my sister in law, so just have enough time to thank Diane over at HEART SHAPED for her kind, " I think you actually look like Russell Crowe from Les Misérables" comment from yesterday's blog. It did tickle me somewhat.......even though his face nowadays does have the look of a couple of fat birds wrestling under a duvet

(Listen I'll the take the compliment in the spirit it was given)

It also got me to thinking just who do others 'here' resemble from the world of celebrity ? Now I know I have mused a little about this before..as we have already debated that Tom Stephenson is the spit of John Hurt with a hangover...but who do YOU think you look like?

I would be interested to know

Anyhow, I am already late...I have not had time to even wash my face, so disguising the awful windswept hairstyle with a hat and covering up the spilled coffee stains down my front with the same coat I wrapped camilla in.... I am off out

god I'm a classy date

RUSS CROWE eat your aussie heart out

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.

What We DO have!

Welsh Terriers William and Meg "smiling" for the camera

Concentrate your life to one thing and you are in danger of neglecting all of those other things waiting in the wings.

Today has been a day to catch up with gardening

and today has been time to appreciate what we do have rather than what we have lost

Here is a brief snap shot of some of the good things

Winnie and Jo (centre and right) Russell (left) and you can just see Camilla  behind

Albert looking startled ( out rabbit hunting)

I have agreed to take another duck after the weekend
A robust Muscovy drake

Sorrel and baby are doing just fine.....well the fat bastard  hasn't stood on him yet!!!

George looking older than his years, hidden away on Mabel's sofa

Buster- the abandoned bantam (right) giving it large with the geese

Broody despite the weather

I was due to take neighbour and friend Carol over to Alfreton in Nottinghamshire today to collect her new Welsh Terrier puppy from the breeder we bought all of our terriers from. However when I got up, the weather had changed from being a benign spring back to a  rather chilly snowy winter , so reluctantly we thought it prudent to cancel the trip,
I am glad we have, crossing the Pennines in snow is not a bag of laughs
Animals HATE being very wet and very cold. They can do one or the other quite easily, but do not fair well if both are on the cards, so I placed extra feed inside the hen houses today as I know the birds will not be venturing too far from home.
One old buff is holed up on eggs in a broody box which is safely tucked away on the allotment. All of the broody boxes this year have been set up inside donated dog crates, making them impregnable against the marauding badgers which still troll through the field at night.
In the duck house another old runner has made a nest for herself. and in the goose house both Winnie and Jo have laid their huge white oval eggs together in the name nest. This accounts for their behaviour with Camilla, I suspect as the juvenile female is "too close for comfort" to be allowed into the same nesting area.
Out grazing the Canada goose seems to have rejoined her companions safely. only at night does she separate off to join the slightly bemused "crackheads " in their house

Brooding birds never cease to amaze me. They possess a strange ability to completely "Zen out" to everything around them and will possess that strange faraway look which is usually employed by habitual drinkers when you try to engage them in conversation.
Poke a broody hen and they will fluff themselves up and will growl like a dog, but they won't leave their eggs for anything.
This is motherhood in the raw. Instinct and innate behaviour.
No thinking whatsoever.


The cottage looked very dark and rather forlorn when I gazed back at it from the icy field.
Time to light the fire and switch on the lights.
Winter has returned for the day

2 years ago!!!!!!!!!!!

Winnie and Jo the female geese are giving poor Camilla a bad time at the moment!
But they to were sweet little babies only 2 years ago now!
Here is an old video of the two of them in 2010.
God I love goslings!