Saturday 27 February 2010
Well we are back to green – hooray, it rained a lot in the night, it must have done because I have a small lake back again, but the paths are looking pretty good so the drainage where we have done it, is working!! It was a warmer night thank goodness because my boiler broke yesterday afternoon, so the house was cold and NO bath aaaaaaagggggghhhhh!!
Our coffee times are always fun and sometimes hilarious, although on occasion the tone of the conversation can take a dive pretty quickly. Yesterday however we were deciding what the definition of a cold house is. Dick said it was when a mars bar gets brittle enough to snap, and I reckoned that it was when you have the devil’s own job to get the toothpaste to come out of the tube. We then discussed ice on the inside of windows, which all of us had experienced in the past, it makes us the tough Brits that we are!! But I have to say I hope the boiler man comes today because it is not fun in an unheated house in February.
It is lovely to see all the grass again though, it is looking a little sad and squashed, but grass is the most amazingly resilient stuff and it will recover soon and then have to be mowed!! Richard gave us a really nice cylinder mower and I am dying to try it out, I know it will give a much nicer cut than a rotary mower. Talking of grass, and then onto Rabbits, which I have a ton of living around the place, everyone was moving sand into the new aviaries yesterday and a rabbit has had babies in the sand pile, so now I have Roger, Rory, Rupert and Randal (not my choice!!! Blame John and Holly!) in a box on a hot water bottle in the kitchen next to the baby owl!! They are being fed on a kitten mix about every 2 hours and they are not easy to feed, but they survived the night. It will be interesting to if we succeed in rearing them, I think they will not be tame even though their eyes are still shut. So far I don’t think the dogs have realised they are there, once they do things will get a little more difficult. I suppose we could have just left them, but that seemed a little unfair as they would not have survived and after all we did remove their home.
Some of the crocuses are up, the snowdrops have survived the snow and the daffodils are coming, spring must be on its way. Although I do feel sad for all the deer in Scotland, more snow for them. I think it is daft not to feed them, if it is a 100 million pound industry then for heavens sake the people earning that should spend some of it and put out some hay for them, they are not going to suddenly stop looking for food in a normal winter and rely on hay if they do it in these extreme conditions. Just feed the creatures, buy them some hay, you owe it to them.
I watched that programme about Luna, the killer whale that wanted company, now I work with animals on a daily and probably much more intimate way than most scientists, and I disagree entirely with them that people should not have been involved, and taken what was an amazing opportunity given by that whale, there should have been a way to make the creature have human company and not go and annoy the wrong people, whales are eminently trainable, and very intelligent, what gives scientists the right to think they know more. Certainly in the raptor world they don’t have half the insight or understanding that those who work with the birds do, in fact not a quarter of the understanding. Only the North Americans could invent the words tough love. Time we tried it on humans beings to stop over eating, that would be much more valuable!
Saturday. We were not able to do much on the drainage this week as we still had snow at the beginning of it, so we finished off Mozart's new block of enclosures or nearly, and replaced the benches in the flying field, and raked leaves! Roger, Rory, Rupert and Randal are still with us! They are being bottle fed still and they do not appreciate it, but they are pretty cute and all bar Randal have opened their eyes now, I wonder when they start eating greens. Don’t ask me what we are going to do with them, I am more worried about them surviving at this point. The new benches are half done and the seating area in the flying ground looks pretty damn good. I have to say that the old benches were removed just in time and that could be an understatement!! They were barely still standing. The timber for the new ones came from Travis Perkins who gave us a really good price and Mike cleared the area and we put down 12 tons of scalpings after leveling the ground, then flattened it with my whacker plate, which is a dynamite machine.
Saturday we were busy, but the weather for tomorrow looks dreadful.
Our coffee times are always fun and sometimes hilarious, although on occasion the tone of the conversation can take a dive pretty quickly. Yesterday however we were deciding what the definition of a cold house is. Dick said it was when a mars bar gets brittle enough to snap, and I reckoned that it was when you have the devil’s own job to get the toothpaste to come out of the tube. We then discussed ice on the inside of windows, which all of us had experienced in the past, it makes us the tough Brits that we are!! But I have to say I hope the boiler man comes today because it is not fun in an unheated house in February.
It is lovely to see all the grass again though, it is looking a little sad and squashed, but grass is the most amazingly resilient stuff and it will recover soon and then have to be mowed!! Richard gave us a really nice cylinder mower and I am dying to try it out, I know it will give a much nicer cut than a rotary mower. Talking of grass, and then onto Rabbits, which I have a ton of living around the place, everyone was moving sand into the new aviaries yesterday and a rabbit has had babies in the sand pile, so now I have Roger, Rory, Rupert and Randal (not my choice!!! Blame John and Holly!) in a box on a hot water bottle in the kitchen next to the baby owl!! They are being fed on a kitten mix about every 2 hours and they are not easy to feed, but they survived the night. It will be interesting to if we succeed in rearing them, I think they will not be tame even though their eyes are still shut. So far I don’t think the dogs have realised they are there, once they do things will get a little more difficult. I suppose we could have just left them, but that seemed a little unfair as they would not have survived and after all we did remove their home.
Some of the crocuses are up, the snowdrops have survived the snow and the daffodils are coming, spring must be on its way. Although I do feel sad for all the deer in Scotland, more snow for them. I think it is daft not to feed them, if it is a 100 million pound industry then for heavens sake the people earning that should spend some of it and put out some hay for them, they are not going to suddenly stop looking for food in a normal winter and rely on hay if they do it in these extreme conditions. Just feed the creatures, buy them some hay, you owe it to them.
I watched that programme about Luna, the killer whale that wanted company, now I work with animals on a daily and probably much more intimate way than most scientists, and I disagree entirely with them that people should not have been involved, and taken what was an amazing opportunity given by that whale, there should have been a way to make the creature have human company and not go and annoy the wrong people, whales are eminently trainable, and very intelligent, what gives scientists the right to think they know more. Certainly in the raptor world they don’t have half the insight or understanding that those who work with the birds do, in fact not a quarter of the understanding. Only the North Americans could invent the words tough love. Time we tried it on humans beings to stop over eating, that would be much more valuable!
Saturday. We were not able to do much on the drainage this week as we still had snow at the beginning of it, so we finished off Mozart's new block of enclosures or nearly, and replaced the benches in the flying field, and raked leaves! Roger, Rory, Rupert and Randal are still with us! They are being bottle fed still and they do not appreciate it, but they are pretty cute and all bar Randal have opened their eyes now, I wonder when they start eating greens. Don’t ask me what we are going to do with them, I am more worried about them surviving at this point. The new benches are half done and the seating area in the flying ground looks pretty damn good. I have to say that the old benches were removed just in time and that could be an understatement!! They were barely still standing. The timber for the new ones came from Travis Perkins who gave us a really good price and Mike cleared the area and we put down 12 tons of scalpings after leveling the ground, then flattened it with my whacker plate, which is a dynamite machine.
Saturday we were busy, but the weather for tomorrow looks dreadful.
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1 comments:
Hello Jemima :)
I've been reading your blog for a few weeks and really enjoy it.
With regard to weaning wild rabbits I found this information in the House Rabbit Society website that may be helpful http://www.rabbit.org/faq/sections/orphan.html
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