Meeses

I was doing some work on the computer a little while ago and I looked down at something near my feet which must have caught my eye by its movement.  A beautiful black mouse it was, close enough for me to grab if I was quick enough. Of course I didn't try and the mouse disappeared into thin air at my slightest move.

There's a fridge in the shed not connected to electricity where I store food for my bird friends and a big rat jumped out the door I leave slightly ajar so as it doesn't go mouldy inside. Frightened the BJ out of me.

The cold had come in quickly and i'll need to do some vermin control. I can't find the mouse and rat traps I had in the laundry. They were always in my way so I put them somewhere else and now I can't remember where I put them. Lib hates me using poison as if I do there seems to always be a stinking rotting carcas somewhere that is hard to locate.

We have lit the fire this past two evenings, weeks earlier than usual.

Some compensation

A Tough Week

Tiredness creeps over me, vine like. I saw the doc on Tuesday. He wants me to stay on the same dose of cortisone for another three weeks, then reduce from 5mg daily to 4 for three weeks then see him in six from now. I had a couple of good days during the week but yesterday and today have not been good.

It was quite a busy week work wise and I had to speak out on Wednesday night, a guest speaker to the Camellia Society, the subject bees. My friend Keith who asked me to do it ages ago, and his wife Jenny, picked me up and drove me to Melbourne. I had a bit of a power point thing done but I didn't do very well, losing the thread of my talk quite badly. I didn't get home till nearly midnight after a very busy day, a day that tested my normally good nature. Frustrated that I was made so busy and unable to take time to prepare during the day, I savaged a couple of people verbally who didn't deserve it, which was not good preparation, and counter productive to all else.

That's it, no more speaking for me. No more more many things for me. I'll fulfill my obligations as president at the Emerald Museum which does involve some extra effort outside the comfort zone. That runs till July 2015. I have been so tired this last couple of days, the warnings are there for me.

I was stiff and sore this morning. Lib and Gordon went to Seville to watch Gembrook play in the first round but I stayed home. The good thing was that the sun came out after 3 days of rain and overcast, so I went out onto the deck in shorts only and did my yoga exercises and basked in the lovely sunshine. It really did free me up and I was much better in the afternoon.

My dreams are still rampant every night. People from all periods of my life turn up in them in the most bizarre circumstances, some of which should be so horribly frightening but it doesn't leave me affected much. In one I was with the first fleet that settled in Australia and there was not enough food and starvation happening, and I was given the job of killing the newborn. Maybe I'm going nuts.

A Dog's Life

Lib has gone to work just now, not that it's a working day for her, nor will she be paid, but there is something she wants to do out of hours or something she wants to talk to the weekend staff about whom she does not normally see. She left quietly perhaps not finding me very communicative as I was trying to do some basic yoga exercises that her sister Pat sent me on facebook in the hope it may help my stiffness and soreness which has returned steadily as I have reduced the cortisone, now down to one 5mg tablet a day this past week. Activity is again painful and I am not in the best of humour much of the time. I see the quack again next Tuesday and it will be interesting whether he recommends I continue at 5mg for a while, further reduce to 2.5, half a tablet, or increase to give me some better relief again. He may send me for blood tests again and probably it depends on how much pain I tell him I'm in. Pain is pain and difficult to quantify verbally. I am in less pain than I was before the cortisone started but putting my trousers and socks and boots on is not an easy thing nor working at anything but slow pace measuring movements and work goals accordingly. I loathe being unwell.

Back to 'A Dog's Life', Lib took 'Pip' with her to the nursing home. She loves going with Lib to see the oldies and performs with all the excitement and tail wagging happiness that Jack Russells can. The oldies love to touch and pat her and Lib says even the crazies who are for the most part aggressive to staff and other residents just melt and are so gentle to the little dog. It must soothe their soul with some long gone happy connection with pets back in their childhood.

Pip is seven years old this year. She's had a number of narrow escapes. She ate snail bait from a tin in my van once, and has had a couple of close calls from traffic. This year she disappeared into some scrub at the back of a shed at Hanna's where I grow things, in pursuit of a rabbit. She had not reappeared when I was ready to go and I could not find her. Earlier I had heard muffled barks from underground from the direction of the shed but now nothing. Going around the shed whistling I thought I heard faint whimpering from under the shed so tried digging here and there but I had no idea where she might be. Rather than dig for hours fruitlessly I whistled and whistled, thought I heard more faint whimpering, but if I had heard it it stopped and there was no Pip and no noise at all, just deathly quiet.

It seemed I had lost my wonderful Pip. I slowly resigned myself that she'd been bitten by a snake or crushed by a wombat as there are numerous wombat holes at Hanna's and she is always down them. I had been warned that wombats were well known to crush small dogs to death against the burrow wall after they becoming tired of intrusions. The snake scenario seemed more likely, it was during all that hot weather, and I had always been a little ready for Pip to go that way as she is so adventurous and always fossicking about in the scrub for rabbits or under rubble or wood heaps. And JRs being totally fearless I always thought she would go a snake if she came across one. And there are snakes around there and a few dogs have been lost around Gembrook this year to snakes.

So I was trying to build up my resolve to leave and go home with Snowy only, imagining Lib and Gordon's grief at the news. I knocked on Hannah's door and told her that I it looks like I'd lost Pip as she was out helping earlier with all my whistling and calling and listening and looking. We were looking down the grass path to the scrub and the shed when out came an exhausted Pip completely covered in red dirt coming towards us. You can imagine my huge relief.

When I washed all the dirt from her later I saw she had lost fur from the top of one front paw and the same from a few toes on a back leg and i assumed this had scraped off in getting out or her predicament backwards somehow. A couple of weeks later this was not growing back and the dog was licking there much of the time and it looked inflamed and sore so I took her to the vet. The vet gave us anti inflammatory medication and antibiotics but there was no improvement so I went back and Tom vet put one of those buckets on her head to stop her licking, gave her stronger medication and an injection to kill mites that cause wombat mange. The bucket lasted four days before Pip managed to make it tear to pieces on her never ceasing hunting cavorts, but the licking cycle was broken and the hair has grown back.

Snow had a serious and persistent ulcer on an eye in Jan/ Feb before Pip's drama so we were up and down to the vet for months it seemed but all is well and both dogs are fit and healthy.

We are luckier than our next door neighbours. Week before last they lost there Rhodesian Ridgeback hit by a car in the main street. They returned from work to find the dog gone. Neighbour Tom had hit a wombat in his car on the way home and the car was severely damaged and had lost its water as Tom drove home and the engine was damaged, so Tom couldn't go looking for the dog. The vet rang him next morning as the dead dog in the vacant block opposite his clinic was reported to him and the dog was microchipped so he found the owner.

Tom and kath had no idea why their dog had escaped but I knew. About 2pm that day someone started firing a shotgun in the farm behind our street. I happened to be home and suddenly Pip and Snow were scratching at the door to get in. At this stage I had not heard shots and thought there must be a thunderstorm brewing in the distance that I could not yet hear. Soon it was obvious and the firearm which must be an automatic shotgun was booming for about half an hour intermittently with multiple shots then a break then more. I know not why whoever it was was shooting at this time of day and in this manner as every rabbit for miles would have been well in hiding. It was, in my opinion, irresponsible hooning with a shotgun that would have terrified every dog in every yard for kms.

I have voiced my annoyance to the police and landowner. The police was a dead end, apparently I should have reported it when it was happening so they could come out and see the person doing the shooting. As if they'd still be there. My suggestion that the police contact the land owner by phone to discuss the pros cons of vermin control and discharging firearms close to residential area was met with the response that they'd rather go to the scene when it was happening and talk to the shooter in person, in case it was an illegal shooter. Whatever suggestion I made to this guy in the new $8 million police station in Emerald he had a negative attitude in response.

The landowner, via office staff, said that someone had permission to shoot and destroy vermin on their property and it was entirely legal.

Nothing can help my neighbours who loved their dog and had put in two years raising and training it. We were lucky it wasn't ours.

Where is common sense gone?  

Good News This Week

After last week's sad news came some good this week. Sister Meredith received a letter from our Aunt Hatsu who lives in Adelaide. We had presumed that she had passed away as she had not written for a few years after exchanging letters with Meredith every year for perhaps 30 years. She's well and enjoying life at age 80. Her second husband died ten years ago and she lives quietly with the company of a few good friends from the Japanese community.

Our Uncle Ron, Elvie's brother, always a bit of a weird turkey, married Hatsu after corresponding with her by mail in the early 1960's I think it was. She came to Australia and we liked her enormously as kids for the short time we knew her before she and Ron moved to Narracoorte then Adelaide. They had two children, Lester and Nerissa. Lester is an airline pilot and lives overseas but has regular contact with Hatsu while I believe Nerissa is in Melbourne but her Mum does not hear from her often.

Ron and Hatsu became estranged and Hatsu left him, I'm not sure when, perhaps early/mid seventies. I went to Adelaide in 1977 to a Bee Congress and stayed a few nights at Hatsu's flat, the kids were at school and Hatsu worked as a waitress at a nearby hotel. I met the fairly elderly man Hatsu was later to marry. He was a patron at the hotel and apparently a kind man.

I'm just so glad Hatsu is well and enjoying a happy and quiet old age and I would love to visit her one day. I went to Adelaide a year or two ago for a holiday with Lib but I didn't know she was still alive. I did visit Ron, he was in a nursing home and confined to barracks as he was on the way to losing the plot. He remarried to a Filipino lady and had another daughter, Emily. That wife also became estranged and left him but I knew where he was through letters the daughter and Meredith exchanged. Ron and Elvie exchanged letters for decades until Ron said it was too difficult to write due to his arthritis and Elvie was the same due to Macular degeneration.

Ron remembered me clearly and saw me as a light at long last who could save him from his imprisonment. He said Emily and her boyfriend had taken his house and he had no money and she never visited. I inquired from the staff as to Emily's contact details, of course they wouldn't tell me but they said Emily visited regularly and brought Ron anything he needed. Lib who was with me and has worked thirty years with geriatrics said paranoia is common with onset dementia and they often don't remember family visiting.

A funny story about Ron. When we were kids and at Nanna Wilson's house Jod, a bird egg collector, found a blackbird's nest and stole the eggs. He showed them to Ron who was infuriated that this kid had done that and he broke the eggs in Jod's face. About forty years later, Ron was on one of his perhaps biennial pilgrimages from Adelaide to visit his sister Elvie at Chamomile Farm. On this particular day Jod happened to be in the kitchen after having had quite a few beers and with his razor sharp memory he recalled this incident to Ron and went to the fridge, took a couple of eggs, and broke them on Ron's bald head.

My bad news of the day was I was got the better of by some prickly pears at Marguerita's. She rang me early this morn asking could I come out and pick some for her with my ladder. I wanted to pick some holly berries there so out I went about midday, starting on the pears first. I got her a big bucket full but learned the hard way that prickly pear have these needles like brown dust that get into your clothes, into your face down the neck and I was so badly afflicted I had to go home and shower and change clothes but my skin came up in a dreadful itchy prickly rash. It was 33C and I have been sweating like a pig because of the cortisone I think so it was frankly a bugger of a day for me and I'll have to go back for the holly tomorrow.