Friday, May 27, 2011

Joan, Amber and Ravens

I have been inviting Joan’s friends to visit and look through her clothes and shoes. I had no idea she had so much even though the walk-in robe was/is a mass of colour not associated with my drab wear.

Masses of clothes and shoes have been taken by friends who are not only very happy with their selection, by feel good about keeping a few things of Joan’s. I am thankful too that I won’t have to take it all to the Good Samaritans. There will still be quite a lot that will go to charity.

A couple of days ago I wrote about our cat Amber being unfriendly and the possibility that she would have to go. This morning, as if Joan has warned her, Amber is being quite nice. She has rather a Pavlovian existence, conditioned to wake me at around 5.45am and yowl until I get up and give her some food. I hope to break this habit by making a self feeder filled with food that is not her favourite eat. That way she won’t necessarily get too fat, but will keep off my case every morning.

This morning I put out on the lawn, a plastic meat tray with scraps for the morning Raven visit. Through the kitchen window I watched as a Raven circled the tray about ten times, obviously suspecting that this black tray was some sort of trap. Eventually the bird gingerly flipped the tray over and ate the contents from the lawn, away from the tray. I recall as a young lad on my grandmother’s farm that I could go out onto the verandah with a broom and point at crows in the field without any reaction, but if I did the same with a ‘pea rifle’, (.22 calibre) the crows would take flight. Smart buggers!

The West Australian newspaper this morning had a typical journos sensationalist beat-up headline.
Click to enlarge to read the article
We will not soon be drinking sewerage, but eventually getting water from what is called the Gnangara Aquifer to which has been added almost pure water from treatment plants which will be further filtered in the aquifer.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Kev, when I worked in the school library, I noticed that there were always at least 2 ravens tearing away pieces of the fly wire covering open windows, I,d try and discourage them but they still carried on. My boss was a lover of ravens and wouldn,t do anything to stop them. By the end of the year , I couldn't open any window because the flies would have flown in. The boss said that the ravens only did this when I was in the library, Someone that had been reincarnated and was trying to tell me something ?? Marg.