Feeding frenzy between freezes

& so he/she sits

The big birds had a clutch of eggs & CleoPatton started sitting on them two-three days before we left last December.  Because V** needed to get thru there every day & because Antonelle's hormones amp her up when he goes into his brooding coma, we took the eggs away.  We knew they were not viable; they were left exposed overnight during several freezes & no matter how diligent the birds: these eggs were never going to hatch.

Then we left, had a happy vacation (pictures to appear here ...whenever I get around to it).  We got back to snow on Christmas Day.  Okay, flurries but still Snow?  in Fladidah?  The birds seemed kind of sluggish, but in that cold we weren't all that surprised.  I started  leaving extra apples for them (they are stoopid-crazy for apples, if you ever need to lead an emu, I recommend a feed scoop full of cut apples), checked them where they chose to hunker down (I assumed they were conserving heat) & did not think much about it.  Until I realized they seemed to stay hunkered in the same general area.

It took a while, but I finally clued in that SHE was sitting on a new, smaller clutch of eggs.  & he was sitting nearby, what we call nest-adjacent. & this has been how it has been.  We thought at first maybe he had moved the eggs & sat on them, or maybe had split away some of them but no...she is definitely sitting on all of the eggs & he is sitting with her.  Sometimes they switch, but most of the time when she gets up, he gets up & follows her where ever she goes.  Yes, he's a dead-beat dad but he is devoted to her.

We decided against removing the eggs this time.  I worry about her going thru the whole lay eggs/lose weight thing for a third time in one season.  & so she sits.  & he sits with her.  & so we wait...until they just don't sit anymore.

Riled raptors react rapidly

The emus have had it.  Long, cold wintery days (this is Fladidah, damn it), dog attacks & today was the last straw.  The contractor hired by the power line people to trim branches arrived bright & early with no notice whatsoever & needed access to the back pasture.  In the past they have gone down the neighbors driveway, as the power line actually runs along this fence line.  On our side, there are intersecting fences making the whole process much more of an ordeal. 

This morning, though, there were a number of reasons they had to cut limbs from our side & unfortunately the back gate was too narrow.  So for several hours today Antonelle ran herself ragged trying to get away from the loud grinding noises of tree limbs being cut & falling & chipped.  She scraped her neck sticking her head through the rails of the fence & pacing, pacing, pacing.  By noon, I was exhausted just watching her.

My problem right this minute is I cannot tell if I am aggravated because of all the other aggravating stuff that has happened this month or am I aggravated because they could not pick up the phone last Friday, last night & let us know they would be here & we could have dealt with the 'big chickens' (their words) before they got here.  I suspect it is a combination of both, although I have noticed a strangely cavalier attitude towards schedules south of the Mason Dixon that would get a person laughed out of business just north of it.  So maybe on top of everything else, this is just another outlander problem.

Quilters quiz me vis à vis quips & quackery

Apparently some of my friends were astonished that I agreed to do a brief presentation of my string quilts to one of the bees (the Miniature Quilt Bee to be exact). While it is true that I have called the guild that sponsors these bees the Symbionese Liberation Quilt Guild the fact remains that I do still have friends there & when they ask me to do something that does not involve anything from me but to be listened to & admired, I am pretty much willing to do it. It helps of course that this group does not meet before noon. Finally, the SLQG was not actually charging for me to be there while I was expected to donate my time & that was indeed the clincher. No it was not; it has been the clincher in the other direction (group charge but me not get paid). This time the clincher was J*** asking so elegantly if I would "be so kind as to" & of course I said yes.

This is how I happened a few afternoons ago to be standing in the community rec center blathering on about foundation free string piecing. Again.

The group theme is mini-quilts: those small scale replicas of larger quilts, with tiny patterns on tiny bits of fabric held together with tiny stitches. Whereas I consider a 4' by 4' quilt to be on the small side. They have been making mini-string quilts last month, this month; mini-quilts take longer than you would think.

For me, this meant getting together at least some of the string quilts I have made & then flung to the far corners of the US. I wanted to say earth, but although I have sent strings, sample blocks & patterns to Australia & Iraq (they asked for them, no really) that seemed an exaggeration. Although now that I think about it most of my string quilts are in Florida & New England, which are actually the closest corners of the US. Whatever, it meant tracking them down.  Some were just across town, but others had further to travel. 

& track them I did, with varied success.

While not the first I ever made, this is the original pattern.  Concept, too as there were many many classic pooh scraps left over from something.  The first is, I am sorry to say somewhere in limbo.  It left here in March 2008 to be given as a mitzvah for one of my niece's First Communion (yes, we like to mix things up).  & there it has sat, still pending for reasons I am not sure I understand but...I digress.

My sister sent the quilts she & her daughter got one year at holiday time.  Guess which one belongs to the grown woman & which belongs to the child who just painted her new bedroom weirdly orange-red? 


From my mom the first string quilt I made.  I think.  The scraps were from a much larger project & we needed to use them up & clear them out.  & I showed a few others but they are either pretty routine or their pics have already been shown on this blog so Iwill spare you.  As I look over my left-overs though I am realzing I could use some freshening.

In which an organization dedicated to the preservation of a childhood icon ponders prostitution

When we visited London in ought-five-or-six (I really do not quite remember) one thing I very much wanted to do & DID do was see the Pooh portrait at the National Portrait Gallery. Christopher Robin was also in the picture, but I do not care about him.

Not so very long before we went, some group in the UK (perhaps the very group...but I digress) had become quite testy with the New York Public Library because they (the library) had the actual original Winnie-the-Pooh in their collection & the complainants felt this artifact belonged on British soil, what with Pooh being a national treasure & all. In the version I heard, the library responded they would be happy to discuss it, just as soon as the British Museum returned the Elgin Marbles...& all those mummies...

I have decided to believe this story for two reasons. First, it sounds like something a New York librarian would say: snarky yet well informed, dare I say snarkily well informed? Also Pot-Kettle-Black is one of my favorite games.

Flash forward to last January when I read this & learned again that indeed nothing is sacred. The very organization charged with preserving the original Pooh concept, those same caretakers that licensed him to Disney & gave us those flat-colored amorphous things & the Tigger song which I agree is worth having & then turned around & re-sold us Classic Pooh, maybe even inspiring that whole Classic Coke debacle....

What I am trying to say is I learned that someone had been commissioned to write more Pooh. Imagine that Christopher Robin never grows up. He never really leaves the hundred acre wood. He never writes his memoir talking about how intellectually distant his father was, that his mother could give a chilblain a run for its money & that he is sick&tired of people asking him about the G*d D*mned Bear. We have to pretend we do not know he married his first cousin against his mother's wishes- not because she was his first cousin but because she did not care for the girl's father, her own brother. It is too much to ask.

This is hardly the first time such a thing has happened. You might not know it but recently the Peter Pan People aka The Great Ormond Street Hospital authorized a sequel to Peter & Wendy. I just do not know what to think. I do, however have the audio-version on hold at the library. Someone somewhere had the good sense to hire Tim Curry to read the thing & that I will not miss.

But back to Pooh. Return to the Hundred Acre Wood will be on shelves in a bookstore near you tomorrow & just in time for holiday sales. I am not sure I will be able to face it but face it we must.

//how do you play Pot-Kettle-Black you ask? Well it is very easy. Whenever you catch people biotching about someone else doing something that they themselves do, you get right in their face & scream "Pot Kettle Black!". It is most effective if you have something in your mouth that sprays while you do this. I try to keep twizzlers & beer in my purse for just such occasions. Tuna sandwiches work too. Originally this game was widely known (in my family anyhow) as Guess My Food, but I classed it up a bit.

Ongoing oratory overwhelms observation or This is the time of year I tell my representatives what I think of them

I for one am tired tired tired of people screaming faux facts about healthcare at each other.

While it is true that he who talks loudest talks last, chances are good it is not because he is correct or will even remain uncorrected, but because everyone who wants to have a real conversation has decided to have it in another room.

When that happens, it is no use whining at the door that you want in. Deliberately drowning out other voices loses you that privilege.

I have previously said I believe we have had a form of socialized healthcare for a long time & it has left middle income individuals footing most of the bill. I have also said I actually think it would make small businesses able to compete with their larger counterparts. Now I have written all my representatives outlining my view on healthcare (I am for it: not just for the affluent, not just for the employed). & I am completely confident that they will ignore me; they always have.

Several years ago I wrote to my-then-representative for outlining why I supported the tightening of the Brady Bill. Same rep then went to a press conference to explain why she had voted against it: in all the letters she received from her constituents not one supported it. Huh. I might have given her the benefit of the doubt & said maybe my lone voice got lost in the mail except her office replied to my letter. With a form letter, but a reply of any kind does mean it got there.

This kind of 'perfect score' is no doubt supposed to persuade anyone on the fence what the majority already believes & the inert that the decision is already made. & it probably works to some degree. The catch is, not surprisingly, there is always at least one person who knows it is a lie. & that begs the question: why would a representative lie to the people she represents about what they told her they want? The answer is simple: so there will be no discussion.

I guess I should not give a damn, after all I have healthcare- pretty good, government sponsored healthcare. Not because I am over 65 & not because I am disabled & not because I am a veteran. I am none of those things (though I do hope to be over 65 some day). I have excellent government sponsored healthcare because my husband works for a state university. It turns out that a very large percentage of the work-a-day insured & their insured dependents are in similar health plans: between federal, state & local government entities, the government is already the largest healthcare agency in the country.

The funny thing about this government healthcare is a lot of people the people protesting it want it. I do not just mean those who expect to collect Medicare someday. I know & I know you do, too, at least one person who wanted a city/state/national job because "while the pay is not so good the benefits are great". & finally, in truly amusing news this most conservative state I live in has no problem with public healthcare for....property that might suffer damage because it was built in flood plains or dredged wetlands or along the beaches. Its the people we do not want to take care of.

No nay never no nay never no more

The heart wants what the heart wants. Or so I am told. Whenever anyone is looking for an excuse to do whatever the hell they want in the name of love. I do not not believe this to be true, I just do not think narcissism & greed count as love. Think about it: by the other standard every drunk is the most loving person on earth. I promise you they are not.

The pursuit of what the heart wants is often a strange winding road. If you have any poetry in your soul at all, you can take a step back & remember it unfolding before your own eyes. Last week my farrier was here trimming Becca & CoCo (she got Bert & Tiki last time). Funny thing about my farrier: she is allergic to horses. She rides most weekends in winter & many evenings in summer but when her skin makes contact with a horse, she gets "all itchy".

I myself am allergic to stinging insect in general & bees more particularly. I long for a hive of my own. & if the IFAS extension that deals with beekeeping survives the shake up, I hope to have one set-up by the end of next year.

Finally, we have a dog who is actually allergic to fleas (I know, how could she survive & yet she is 14 years old). She also has bad back; parts of her spine have fused together. & what she wants most of all is to scratch that spot the fleas get to right at her tail. A couple times a year she hurts herself badly, scrunched around in this position. This last time we thought we might be putting her to sleep she was so obviously wracked with pain. But she wanted to live to scratch again.

I could not say what anyone else's heart wants but every happy person I know wants what will be hard. The easy thing is rarely worth having. & where is that line between what is reasonable, what is madness & is life better too far from it?

///funny thing about this song. Every Irish band on YOUTUBE covers it but the song itself is almost certainly Australian. When I hold Coco's head, I usually put my cheek to hers & sing quietly (Which makes V** laugh & say "I can still hear you"). Wild Rover is one of them of course, but her favorite seems to be Young Brennan on the Moor. No really.

Modest majority has moral misgivings OR How the infidels came to have Good Friday off

The Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) set the date of Easter as the Sunday following the 14th day of the paschal full moon, which is the full moon whose 14th day falls on or after the vernal (spring) equinox.

& it came to pass that our Houston consulting office was told (by a payroll auditor from the State of Texas) that we needed one more holiday to be in compliance with state law. The news was broken to all of us at the weekly staff meeting & I immediately moved for Ramadan. Not that I ever expected this would fly, but only the boss/owner laughed. The others actually said "but none of us are Muslim".

There was a list of choices, among them Good Friday, which also happened to be the next holiday on the calendar. I voted for Good Friday. The owner voted for Good Friday. The remainder of the staff stood with their mouths hanging open; the two of us did not have a great track record when it came to supporting group absences for religious holidays & it caught everyone off guard.

& then we explained. In this particular year, Good Friday coincided with Passover & my in-laws would be in town (for those who are curious Passover is NOT one of the holidays that State of Texas will consider an official or optional holiday but LBJ's birthday is). This accounted for my unusual sympathy.

But the best was saved for last. The boss wanted Good Friday because his golf course was not open on Mondays, so another Monday holiday was useless to him. There was pandemonium while the ethicacy of selecting a religious holiday for wholly unreligious reasons (unless you consider golf a religion, which F**** kind of does) was debated. & then we moved for a vote.

In the end, Good Friday became an official holiday in our office. & F**** got his golf game in. & I privately swapped Good Friday for whatever day Passover really was (someone has to deal with the calls from clients who do not observe Good Friday) & all was right with the world.

Lively ladies lose their lunch

My nieces visited for a day last week. They had never been here before & I thought the best way to introduce them to useless ranching was to take them through my normal chores.

1st: we fed & watered the emus. As an extra treat (for the emus), I chopped some apples-past-their-prime into small chunks. They go crazy for those.

2nd: we gathered eggs in the henhouse. We were a little late, so at least one egg had been cracked. Many hens clicking eggs around in one nesting box will do this. We threw the cracked egg against the back wall & watched the cannibals scramble for a beakful.

3rd: we moved Becca, the old Appaloosa, around the round pen a bit. In this cold weather, she gets very stiff & it helps to have her warm up, even if she is not always in the mood. Also, this meant the girls could do a little horseback sitting (you really could not call it riding).

4th: we collected some seeds from the Coontie. Zamia floridana is a cycad native to Florida. For whatever reason (neglect!), mine seem to do better than others through the winter & I always have an abundance of seeds to share.

After (& during) this arduous list of duties, we admired the horses & goats, walked to the back fence to see where the smoke was coming from (& got to meet the firemen who responded to our call), checked on the early azalea blooms, stared up at the redbud tree, stalked the barn cats, & of course, tested the trampoline.

I am told that the ride home was a lot like the end of a pub crawl; the one that managed to sleep it off felt much better than the one that did not.

I am thinking maybe I need to get Mike Rowe out here so he can see just how filthy doing nothing-at-all can be.

Knitting comes kicking

I put down my needles when we moved to Houston & have only made maybe a project every year or so since then. Suddenly, I want that feeling again. Last Monday, I went with C****** to the older of the two yarn shops in town (I love the new shop, but they only seem to have teaser skeins; one maybe two but never enough for a project) & bought the merino I have had my eyes on for a while. I still do not know what I want to make but the price is 40% of what it was & so I figured now or never.

C****** also got a skein of a gently variegated blue/green merino & plans to make herself a scarf in the feathers & fan pattern, or old shale or olde shael or whatever you wish to call it. This will be her first foray into lace, but I am confident she can do it. I looked for a link to this very old, very well known pattern but could only find people trying to sell it. So here it is:

row 1: knit
row 2: knit
row 3: knit
row 4: knit 1 /k2together x3, knit 1+yarn over 1 x6, k2together x3/ knit 1
row 5: knit
row 6: same as row 2
row 7: same as row 3
row 8: same as row 4
row 9: same as row 5
repeat until
4th from last row: same as row 4
3rd from last row: knit
2nd from last row: knit
last row: knit

You repeat the bit between the // however many times you want the pattern repeated. I recommend an odd number, say three or five or seven, but it is your call. You can see it is a toughie.

I am afraid I do not have a picture of my own but you could go here. Those of you who are very interested will notice some variation in her instructions & mine; I did not get the pattern here, but it is more or less what it will look like.

This October, Stitches (do not worry if you have never heard of it) will be in several places around the country, including Hartford. I am kinda-thinking I might kinda-wanna go. I mentioned this to A & he said "sure, whatever" so I am fairly certain he was not listening. Me & Mom went to the first one ever in King of Prussia, PA back when I lived in Joisey & she lived...where she does now.

Even today I am not sure I would have enjoyed it so much if it had not been for Nancy Bush. Mom wanted to take a Shetland Lace class & I went along for the ride. Nancy Bush was then better known as a writer/teacher in the more practical sock-world, but she was our instructor. She talked about being stuck in Unst (although she did not seem to see it as stuck) because of some confusion about the ferry & it was the most entertaining lecture I have been to since Jello Biafra spoke at UCONN & explained that the Reagan administration was really building StarWars so they could launch nuclear waste into outer space thereby polluting the galaxy & we should stop worrying about world peace & start worrying about littering.

So, knitting....I should probably see if the needles re-take & I am actually still knitting in say August before I make up my mind about Hartford in October. & if I am getting on a plane anyway, maybe I should skip CT & just go straight to Tunbridge.

Jurassic gigolo gets jiggy

If emus were into Barry White it would have been impossible to get any sleep around here. As it was, A had to proceed with caution whenever he moved in or around the emu yard because CleoPatton has been In The Mood. For reasons I would rather not consider, I am not his type.

It begins with the man-dance. Which is really more an exaggerated man-walk. He walks past you, looking at you, stops, turns & articulates each feather in a sweeping wave pattern & marches back. This goes one for several weeks. That's right, weeks.

If you let him, he will peck-bite your arms, your head & eventually the back of your neck. I am told it does not hurt. I would not know because I am not that kind of girl. No one will be surprised to learn that my husband is. A keeps trying to convince me it is amusing & I should just do it. I should be more worried that apparently he wants to swing with birds, but I just cannot seem to be bothered.

As things progress, CleoPatton will eventually get down on his haunches & start creeping up behind "the object of his desire" & mount it/her/you. I am happy to report that A does draw the line at this. Unfortunately, CleoPatton just stands & begins all over again. Once you have allowed him to bite the back of your neck, he will not take no for an answer. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

While CleoPatton goes through these motions, Antonelle, his patient partner, could not care less. At least I do not think she cares; facial expressions are a tough read on emus. She grooms her feathers & wanders off. She comes back later, sees he is all worked up & A just will not, well you know. So she gets down on the ground & he moves in on her, no preliminaries, done in 30 seconds. This is a good woman. I would not put up with that myself, but the world takes all kinds.

On Friday, CleoPatton would not come out of the emu yard when I opened the main gate. Antonelle hung back, but stood alone. This is two-times unusual. He always wants to wander the front yard, she always stays within eyeline of him. So I went looking & found....16 eggs. He did eventually move out through the gate, but the sound or flash of my camera brought him running back. By Friday night he was sitting on them & will not be lured away, not even with apples (apples are how I get them to do anything; they will go anywhere for apples).

Last year, no one sat on the eggs until December 30 & in the end it was her, reluctantly; he just was not ready for fatherhood. We thought we had more time to get some of them away from him, but there is a very real possibility we will have a dozen or so emu babies in February.

If anyone is interested on this variation on lawn flamingos, give me a call.

I ignore idiots

Well, I try to anyway. I am rarely successful. I find stranger-idiots harder to ignore than idiots-I-know.

The first stranger-idiot that really stuck with me was about 25/30 years ago. It was actually a pair of idiotic moments, juxtaposed idiocy if you will. I was in the medium sized NE town in which I grew up & I was stopped at a light (on Jerome Avenue near Dr. Merkelson's office, if you want specifics). There were two blacks boys (i.e. african-american youths) slouching their way across the street & a little-old-lady going bat-sh*t on the horn of her car. You think you know who the idiot here is but I bet you are wrong: the boys were in a cross-walk & she was trying to make a right run on red. Flash forward, a car full of teenagers honking their brains out at an old man with a walker jay-walking through the same busy intersection. In the second one they are all idiots. Even the passengers on the back seat of the car.

What sticks with me is my conviction that every participant in these little vignettes each left the scene absolutely sure that they were not idiots & the other guy should probably just die. Except for the first two boys; I do not think they had the vaguest idea she was beeping at them. They were so right they could not see that she thought they were wrong.

Even if I did know where the people were & could ask them, I doubt even one of them would remember the moments I remember. I am fairly certain that at least two of them are no longer above ground, but that is the extent of my knowledge. I am equally certain that the unremembered fed their own absolute version of reality.

This brings me to a very recent idiot, also in traffic (yes, I file my idiots: idiots in vehicles, idiots by the side of the road, idiots who think their bicycle helmets will protect their entire body, etc.). She was walking back & forth across University Avenue, in the crosswalk, so I guess that makes it better, having a very involved, emotional conversation with someone on her cell-phone. Oblivious to the traffic around her, she talked & gestured & paced.

I obviously do not ignore idiots; I cannot even forget them. Apparently I archive idiots. I need something else for 'I'. Lets go back to "H'. I will pretend I am Eliza Doolittle & say: h'I h'am 'aunted by h'idiots. No, that is just stoopid.

Hapless husbands hurry home

A has a favorite joke: a doctor, a lawyer & a physicist are having an argument which is better a wife or a mistress. The Doctor says: a wife, she can keep your life organized & remember all your patients when you see them & generally be a helpmate. The lawyer says: no a mistress is better. She is around only for what you want, you don't have to spend every free minute with her & when you separate, you don't have to worry she will take half of everything. The physicist says: you really need both. Then you can tell your mistress you are with your wife, your wife you are with your mistress & go to the lab & get some work done.

That was the whole post, but I thought I should make a bit of an effort. So I will add this: my bookclub has observed that I lean towards entrees that can be made in one pot. The other quality they share is being able to sit, in a warm oven for 'a bit' if someone is running late. Or has no idea what time it is. After all, are you really running late if you don't know you are late?

I think that really is it for this post.

Gregarious goats gather in the garden

It is not so much a garden as a yard. & they do not so much gather as elude. But because they will take every opportunity to eat my ornamentals, I have become more selective about what I grow, even in the livestock-free zones.

I learned this lesson the hard way when our first two goats got into the front yard & made a snack of the azaleas. Our vet could either see them after he had finished his in-clinic shift in several hours or I could bring them to him. Bring them I did. Two nubian goats in the backseat of a Toyota Camry (A had the truck on campus & a switch was just not possible).

When goats vomit, they turn their heads at a 90 degree angle to their bodies & shake them vigoursly from side-to-side (which is effectively up&down in this position). I never did get all that nasty yellow foam out of the ceiling of my Camry & I am sure it is still there today. Fortunately this car had power windows so I could easily roll the back windows down enough so they could stick their heads out & then up again to trap them outside (without endangering them I promise).

I do still grow the original azaleas, but I dig up their babies & give them away. Ditto most of the sagos. Those that stay are well away from any accessible fence-opening ('gate' being a fluid term for a goat). Newly planted ornamentals are of edible varieties: ginger, mostly; aloe & prickly pear, edible even as they are unpalatable; sunflowers while they lasted; banana; etc.

Getting goats out of the yard is tricky. They are herd animals & most of them want to be where the others are; lead one out & most will follow. The exception is our grande dame Cinnamon Girl. She does not mind being alone in the yard, the better to eat it all herself. But she does mind getting wet.

Goats in general abhor getting wet. I have seen them fight with a horse who would kill them with one blow rather than leave a stall & go out into the rain, or even a light mist. Feeding on rainy days can be challenging, as the goats must be removed before I can put feed in the buckets & lure the horses in.

To get Cinnamon Girl out of the yard, we turn the hose on her & drive her around the yard until she gives up & goes back through a gate. Getting goats out of a stall is more of a wrestling match. & once out, they cling to the wall, trying to keep all of themselves under the slight overhang that protects them from that horrible, horrible water-from-the-sky. This makes it hard for me to walk this path keeping the feed in the buckets dry.

But nothing would induce me to live without Cinnamon Girl (although I know Mother Nature will intervene eventually). She is a gentle animal with sweet grassy breathe, who likes to rest her head on me, her chin pointing towards mine. & best of all, when I call her she runs to me looking like nothing so much as a maroinette, all ears & strangely jointed limbs, flying flying.

Emus are easily excited

After several days of hard rain, the emus were very happy to leave their yard & wander the front yard. There is a gate across the driveway & natural barriers along the perimeter, although Cleo has gotten through it more than once.

They tend to stick together & on all but one occasions, when Cleo has gotten out he has stood on one side of the gate in the driveway & she stood on the other. Anxious, but not panicked.

The exception was the last time he got out. Instead of waiting at our gate, he somehow got turned around & was waiting at the gate next door. I had to lure him from that gate to our gate with a scoop full of apples. It took time, not because he does not like apples (they both do) & he definitely understood the follow-the-food technique.

But every time he moved away from the narrow window to the next gate & alongside the underbrush that keeps them from running into the street (ideally), Antonelle thrummed until he would turn back & she could see him again. In the end I had to lure her to our gate & get her to stand there & panic. Then he went straight for her, eating every apple he could find on the way. I opened the gate & she made no attempt to rush out; he walked in & he made purring noises while she groomed her tail-feathers.

When a female emu is alarmed (at least when Antonelle is) she makes a noise that sounds like the opening riff of "These boots were made for walking" I swear. The male sounds like the Velocoraptors in Jurassic Park (the clicking, not the barking).

& they are largely peaceful. They do get frightened & respond in the only way a 100lb bird with a brain the size of bottle of nail polish can: they panic, they try to get away, they panic more. They do snap & fluff at the dog that runs the outside fence of their yard, barking (we don't let her do this, but sometimes she gets away), but mostly they want to be left alone, with each other.

As far as I can see that is their defining characteristic. They are devoted to each other. We have never seen them fight. Not when food was scarce, not when she layed all those eggs & he just would not sit on them (deadbeat!). In the end, she sat on them half-heartedly & he sat next to her.

Cleo does not see well, as I have said in a previous entry, & often snaps her, or food out of her mouth in his attempt to grab something several inches away. We have never seen her snap back.

Emus are especially enamored.

Useless alphabet

Today I had to unload horse feed. This is an exercise equal only to Missionaries & Cannibals if you actually had to do all that rowing yourself, but more because there are always extra scenarios. I will tell you that story another day because today, while working my way back & forth through gates and pastures I started a Useless Alphabet:

Appaloosa are arrogant - accept it, asshole.
Bad dogs. Bad bad bad. Boy-o-boy are you bad dogs.
Chickens choose corn on the cob
Donkeys do know what does & does not belong BUT donkeys don't care
Emus are easily excited.
Forget fun & fascinating vacations, all our funds are forfeited for Feed!

Now, someone else do G.