Country eggs

Free range rooster

It was a lovely sunny day today, I spent the morning in my writing group and the afternoon running errands and walking along the Gaspereau Canal with Hapi. I think the canal was the first open water she'd seen this year and could not resist going for a wade. Later we walked along the river and by the time we got back to the car her fur was full of ice. The trail along the river was in the woods and completely icy. I could have put my ice grippers on but instead I just slid along the trail, almost like skating through the trees.

Spring lambs

I stopped at the Dabro Farm Market for eggs and took photos of the sheep. Lots of little lambs there now but they won't last long, unfortunately they are all doomed for Easter meals in the city. I took a picture of a sheep by the barn and could hear honking behind him, I looked around the corner of the barn and saw the lone goose amongst the sheep. The goose is alone because its partner was sat on last year by a horse and died of its injuries.

Sheep posing for photo

Goose with friends

After the writing group meeting some of us went to the Brown Bag Lunch downstairs from our meeting room. Every week there is a different speaker and people bring their lunches to eat while listening. Today the topic was immigration. there was a lively discussion. The speaker is part of an organization that helps immigrants integrate into the community and the country.

While running errands I met a man I hadn't seen in a while. He is in his late 80s and Hapi nearly knocked him down. I wasn't sure if he was who I thought he was but he remembered me. I'm the lady who bought yellow paint from him for my house. I asked if he was still selling paint. He said he was. He said he never advertised his business but people just knew about him and he had enough customers to support himself and his family all his life. His son refinished my hardwood floor, I called around and they had the best price and I knew that it was a family business and they took pride in the quality of their work. I know that he is also very active in his community and his church. He has such a lovely smile, it would be hard to dislike him.

For years I have been working on a fantasy story but have been having a lot of difficulty with it because I feel I got sidetracked with it, the story was going in a different direction than what I originally intended and I wasn't happy with it. This past week I just couldn't go on with it. I have been aware for some time that things were not going well but I thought that if I just persevered to the end then I could write the story that I intended in the first place, but this week I realized that while perseverance is certainly a virtue, it is not always the right path. I have decided to abandon it, at least for now. Instead I am writing something else, something I have been wanting to do for a very long time but didn't know how to start. Apparently the answer is, start at the beginning.

Two people at the local air force base are in quarantine, waiting for coronavirus test results. If positive they will be the first in this province. They had just returned from Italy and weren't feeling well. I read that the World Health Organization is saying not to use cash because it can be very germy, but I pay cash for my eggs at the farm market. I could pay by e-transfer I suppose, I know they are set up for that. I was talking to a friend who is a nurse at the local hospital, she said the hospital is chock-a-block full now, there is no room for the coronavirus. We were joking about how to greet each other instead of hugging or touching. She demonstrated a two-handed wave that she thought might be good.

Lions and tigers and bears oh my, or, how my son went to sea

I took my son and grandson to the airport yesterday, we made a day trip out of it by going into Halifax a little early and strolling the waterfront to see the International Buskers Festival. My son tells me it is one of the best in the world. We stopped to watch a couple of performers, my grandson requested a balloon creation of a dragon from a ten foot tall man in a red suit and top hat (he was on stilts I think), and we had potstickers, egg rolls and naan rolls at the Farmers Market.

We happened to see the HMCS Sackville moored at a dock with a big sign saying it was free to tour ("by donation"). It is a decommissioned corvette veteran of three wars. My son said it was similar to a ship he served on when he was in the naval reserves. So we went on board and my son gave us the tour. He explained in detail how everything worked, showed us the sailors quarters, the engine room, the helm, the guns and a host of other things. Since my son was the helmsman on his ship when he was on board (in the reserves he did "contracts" of four weeks or so out at sea) he was able to explain in great detail how it all worked. Everything was mechanical, almost no electronics or electrical components at all. They communicated with each other via bells and speaking tubes.

He told us that they did duty in four hour shifts and the shift from 12AM to 4AM was known as "mids". When he was on mids he would sleep leaning on the wheel. The compass ticked whenever it changed direction by a degree, the ticking woke him up and he would adjust the course of the ship. He said he was very good at it and every time he went to sea they always put him on the helm. He sailed up and down the east coast of North America from Labrador to the Caribbean. He said he felt privileged to have had that experience.

In this ship the sleeping quarters and the mess were the same rooms. There were racks for hanging hammocks from the ceiling and below the racks were tables and benches for meals. The hammocks were very narrow and each rack held four hammocks in a space of about six feet in width. Pretty tight! My son said that on his ship they had bunks not hammocks, and the bunks were in a separate room from the mess. But it was still pretty crowded.

Before that we spent some time in Prince Edward Island at a cottage that belongs to my son's inlaws, near a beach. The whole area is mosquito infested, you pretty much had to stay indoors or be thoroughly bug-doped-up to go outside. At the beach were deer fly. The water was warm and the beach quite shallow for a long way with a series of sandbars that you could swim to. Some people sat on the beach in the sun and never went in the water. I quickly found out why: if you went in the water and came out covered in salt, the deer fly zeroed in on you. It was impossible to sit still once you got wet, the deer fly saw to that.

I took Hapi there with me and she quite enjoyed the beach. She went out as deep as she could while still keeping her feet on the bottom, then wandered up and down the beach to check out all the people and kids in the water. She kept a close eye on me and when I went out in the deep water she tried to follow. She did actually swim a bit but mostly she walked on her front legs and dogpaddled her rear legs. The kids at the beach quite enjoyed her.

After a few days of that I was thoroughly insect-bitten and just wanted to go home. Hapi does not travel well and she was glad to go home too. We spent a couple of hours cleaning up the cottage before leaving, one of the owners arrived the day after we left and was impressed at how clean and tidy we left the place. Back in Nova Scotia we mostly just hung out. My son is training for a marathon in the fall so he did some running, we took Hapi to the Reservoir every day and on one day we went to the zoo. It is a really nice zoo, just the right size for an hour or two of walking around looking at the creatures without burning out on too much zoo.

It is a private zoo, run mainly by one family who live on the premises. All the animals have names and little placards saying when they were born and how long they have been with the zoo. Every year they sell off some of their animals. Last year when I went they were selling guinea pigs and pygmy ponies, this year it is piglets. The llamas are in a large pen that you can walk into and pet them. Last year they let the peacocks run free but this year they are penned; someone said it was probably because they were losing them to local coyotes.

There's a resident bald eagle who is injured and can only hop-fly. There used to be two bears now there is only one; the jaguar, siberian tiger and half a dozen lions were all sleeping. One lion slept on his back with his legs in the air! Lots of gibbons and macaques, fallow deer and goats, and one very noisy cockatoo. Of course there was a corn feed dispenser for hand feeding various creatures whose pens clustered around the dispensers. Two huge pythons slept entwined with each other in the reptile house.

Today is my first day of getting caught up on chores and whatnot since the boys left yesterday. Pulled up all my garlic, picked and froze a bunch of green beans, pulled up all the pea stalks and weeded, weeded, weeded. Cleaned out the shed in readiness for stacking the firewood which is currently piled in the driveway. With cold and wet in May and June and then a heat wave for most of July, the garden is not doing so well. Two packets of basil seeds planted and none survived, cucumbers barely surviving, peas so-so and half the potato plants look ill. The blueberries did not do as well as last year and I've been lazy about picking them so the birds are doing it for me. The birds also planted sunflowers all over the yard and they are not doing well but they are flowering. The daylilies are happy though.

Now that the garlic is done I'm thinking about planting carrots and a fall crop of peas. My beans take a breather and then produce a second crop later in the summer. I used to replant them but I don't think I will this year. The tomatoes reseed themselves, I just transplant all the ones I like into one garden bed and pull up the rest as weeds. My strawberry bed has had the biscuit and hardly any of them came up this year, however tomatoes have taken over the strawberry bed so I just let them be.

TBD...

My Pet Predator

Last week was the awards ceremony for the writing competition I entered. I was short-listed but did not win which was what I expected. But two other writers from my writing group and a husband (of one of the other writers) and myself headed into the city for the event. We went early enough to go for dinner beforehand and had a great meal at a tiny African restaurant just around the corner from the Art Bar where the ceremony was held. The winners in each category read their entries and then four people who were in a mentorship program read excerpts from their works in progress. One of the writers who came to the city with me is a poet and she was hoping to hear the winning poetry selection, however the winner was a no-show and they did not read that entry. Too bad, I think it would have been interesting.

We had a good time. I left Hapi with friends and unfortunately she howled most of the time that I was away. They were a little taken aback by that, they had never heard her howl. Separation issues I guess.

I took Hapi to the feed mill with me to get some seed potatoes, onion sets and pelletized lime. They let dogs into the store there. There is a feed mill cat who is unafraid of dogs and another customer had their dog as well. I let Hapi wander, I didn't think there was anything she could get into. Boy was I wrong.

One of the girls behind the counter had ordered chicks to raise for meat birds and her order had arrived and was sitting on the floor behind the counter. A big box full of very cute looking chicks. Hapi eventually made her way behind the counter and saw the chicks. She plucked one out of the box. The girl behind the counter was very fast, she got that chick out of Hapi's mouth in a split second. The chick appeared shocked but alive and hopefully not injured. I apologized profusely but she said not to worry, they were just meat birds.

I was a bit of a nervous wreck when I left the feed mill, I thought I'd take Hapi for a walk to calm my nerves. So we went to the Reservoir. There's a duck there with a nest. Apparently this is the second next that duck has tried to sit on, the first nest and its contents were destroyed by dogs. The current one is only slightly better hidden but I knew about it and roughly where it was from one of the other dog owners. On this particular day I found out exactly where the nest was. Hapi found it. She flushed out the duck sitting on the nest and proceeded to investigate its contents. Meanwhile I was running throught the bushes and across a ditch yelling, "No! No! No!"

I managed to get to the nest before Hapi could snatch an egg and I dragged her away. There were 8 eggs in the nest. A couple of male ducks had been patrolling the pond nearby and when the mother duck was chased off her nest squawking in protest, they joined her in the air, also squawking. I used to joke that those ducks were her bodyguards, but I think they are actually opportunists waiting to see if they can impregnate her again if the nest fails. At any rate the whole gang flew away.

I took Hapi home, thoroughly wrecked by the two incidents. What fun to have a predator for a pet! But I dare not go back to the Reservoir now, she knows exactly where the nest is and will continue to seek it out as long as it is there. Not that I think there is any hope that any of those eggs will survive, if the dogs don't get them then the eagles surely will. Not to mention raccoons, skunks or coyotes. But I just don't want Hapi to be the one to do it. So I am having to take her elsewhere for her morning walk.

Two geese hiding their babies on the left, beaver swimming by on the right

Today we went to the Gaspereau Canal. I saw two ducks, two geese, two eagles and a beaver. I saw the geese twice and it turned out that they had four goslings with them. When they saw Hapi and me they herded their charges across the canal and positioned themselves so that I couldn't see the babies.

Beaver lodge, just left of centre (looks like a heap of sticks by the water's edge)

The beavers around here are "bank beavers", they don't build lodges in the middle of a pond but on the banks of rivers. they don't build dams either, which is a good thing because if they tried to dam the canal they would be removed. One day last month the power company lowered the water level in the canal and you could see the whole beaver lodge including its underwater entry point (which wasn't underwater at the time).

Female eagle in tree, probably waiting for the goslings to appear

There are a lot of micro-hydro installations in this province. They are the original dams built back in the day when such things were quite small. The canal goes between two such dams operated by the power company here, my neighbourhood is powered by one of those dams. There is also a fish ladder around one of the dams for the Gaspereaux fish (they are called alewives in Toronto). Fishers along the river catch them with big dipnets every spring on their spawning migration up the river, and they are shipped to Haiti for food. Fishing season on the Gaspereau is a big deal, it just ended this past weekend. The power company is supposed to run their operation in such a way that the fish are not killed but periodically they screw it up and thousands of fish end up dead.

Moving right along

Spring proceeds apace. Today it is snowing but it is just little flakes that melt when they hit the ground, no accumulation. Supposed to stop soon, then I will take Hapi for her walk and go for lunch with a neighbour. I think we are going to a Korean place, which he says his daughter turns up her nose at because where she lives there are lots of Korean places and many are way better than our one Korean place, but it's good enough for us country bumpkins.

I've got crocuses and hyacinth in bloom, tulips up but not blooming. All the bulbs got moved twice in the last couple of years, the first time so one wall of my basement could be dug up and waterproofed, and the second time to move them back after the work was done. They seem to have survived nicely. I had transplanted them into my vegetable garden and some got left behind in the second move, so there are now flowers in amongst the garlic which is also emerging. I'll try to get the flower bulbs moved after they finish blooming.

Most of the male goldfinches that come to my bird feeder are now in their summer colours and swarming the feeder. Lots of activity. I have to double the amount of seed I put in the feeder at this time of year, and then as soon as the maple that it hangs from leafs out they stop coming. All the birds stop coming then and I take the feeder down until the fall. One squirrel tried to take advantage of the feeder but I tapped him on the back with a broom stick and he was so shocked he leaped ten feet down and six feet away from the tree. I haven't seen him since.

Hapi is no longer limping. I think when she realized that she wasn't going to get a walk until she stopped limping she decided to fake it. There was one day for sure that I saw her limp when she thought I wasn't looking, but as soon as I appeared with leash in hand she was jumping around like a puppy. Managed not to limp for the entire walk. Well, if she wants to fake it then I suppose she deserves it.

The dog that I have been dog sitting for (Hapi's admirer) on the other hand is not doing well. He now has two legs not working properly and both on the same side. I think this might not bode well for him. Fingers crossed though, he's a sweet dog. His owner has an appointment for him to get X-rayed next week if things do not improve.

I have been reading a book called Becoming a Writer, written by Dorothea Brande in 1934. She was ahead of her time I think, I've seen bestsellers published more recently that give the same advice as she did then. But she has one piece of advice I've never seen anywhere else. In her chapter on Writing on Schedule she gives two exercises. The first is to set a time of day and write for 15 minutes at that time every day. Doesn't matter what you write, the point is to create a habit not produce a handwritten gem. The second exercise is to get up early and write for 15 minutes then, also every day and in addition to scheduled writing time. OK, that sounds like common enough advice. But what makes it different is that she then says:

"If you fail repeatedly at this exercise, give up writing. Your resistance is actually greater than your desire to write, and you may as well find some other outlet for your energy early as late."

Way to up the ante!

In other news, the American couple made an offer on a house not far from where I live and it was accepted, they take possession at the end of July. They are back in the USA now scurrying around I presume to get themselves moved.

Ah spring, things are stirring!

...and the snow geese are flying

I saw snow geese the other day, another sign of spring. They say spring here is 2-3 weeks early. They've started sugaring off already. And all the snow around my place melted yesterday, I see bulbs sprouting. Somehow they got dug up last year and are sitting on the ground surface, not sure what they are yet but they're too big for crocuses or snowdrops.

I went to the Harbour because it was such a gorgeous day, sunny and warm. Ruth is off work for a week after surgery (good news surgery) and Nancy had the day off too (she does shiftwork). We sat on Nancy's deck, Val came by and we walked the dogs. Val's dog Phoebe narrowly missed getting a snout full of quills when she discovered a porcupine under a tree. The porcupine slowly climbed up the tree and I desperately started calling Hapi because she was off in the woods somewhere and I did not want her discovering that porcupine when it was right about her nose-height up that tree. We avoided disaster.

Last year when the time changed it felt way too early, still winter. But the clocks change this weekend and I don't think it will be too early.

Rainy and windy today but tomorrow will be sunny again and wHapi and I are going back to the Harbour for a walk on the beach with beachcomber. Also, the Women's Day Cafe is tonight, local musical women performing, a bunch of us are going to that.

Cat chaser

There's a cat up the street who tours my back deck every day, perching briefly on the deck railing. If I don't actually see the cat, I do see its tracks in the snow, and the little cleared space on the deck railing where it sits. Sometimes I see it staring in the window at me, but it takes off if I open the door.

Actually it may be two cats, I saw the pair sitting in their own yard up the street the other day, and I can't tell them apart. Two long-haired grey cats.

One time I came out the back door and the cat took off from my back deck onto the driveway, looking over its shoulder to see if I was following. As it happened I was going to drive somewhere, so when I got into my truck and started out the driveway after the cat, it got really scared. It streaked down the driveway and then turned left up the street.


That was the direction I was headed in too. It just flew up the street. Snowbanks were so high the cat couldn't get off the road until it got to its driveway, so I think it was pretty freaked.


The cat gives me a pretty wide berth now: Lady Who Chases Cats With a Truck.

Probably just as well, a lot of birds visit my birdfeeders and that cat is overly interested in them.

Today we are in the middle of a major spring tease, the temperature is warmer now than it has been since I arrived here last November: +13C. It's even supposed to stay above zero at night for a couple of days. Lots of melting going on.

Yesterday four of us went cross-country skiing in the Harbour before the melting really took hold, it was beautiful.

Zooborn lions

I am a sucker for baby animals, hence my link on the right side of this page to the Zooborns website. I looked at one of today's links this morning, a couple of cute lion cubs.

According to the description, these are seriously endangered animals, which is my reason for being in favour of zoos, that in too many cases there are more members of an endangered species in a zoo than in the wild. Not because we have captured too many and plopped them in prison, but because we have either hunted down or---more likely---have ruined the habitat for the survival of the wild animals. Because there are seven billion of us, and we take up too much space.

Another thing the description says is that these animals were once widespread throughout the Middle East, Pakistan and northern India. Now there are maybe 400 individuals left in the wild, another 100 in captivity. The town I live in has a population of 5,000 (people, not lions), so I guess if we devoted a couple of streets to Asiatic Lions, the entire world population of them could live there. Is that sad or what?

Anyway, getting back to the lion cubs. The description says the cubs are shy. A couple of the photos show the cubs snarling at the camera, I don't think shy is the right word here. Maybe pissed off and wanting nothing to do with us?

"Two thousand years ago they once roamed the whole of the Middle East..."

There are seven billion of us, we take up a lot of space and we need every inch we can get just to feed all of us. I read somewhere that the carrying capacity of the Earth for humans is around one million. We have so overshot. There's not a lot we can do about that now, getting back to one million is kind of unthinkable without talking major catastrophe. But it is terribly sad.

It's unanimous

Going to be an early spring in the East, no question. Every groundhog in eastern Canada and the USA is in agreement, not a one saw its shadow, thanks to the latest Storm a Week. This one is a biggie. All told we are supposed to get 50 cm (20") over roughly 24 hours here in Kings County. Crazy.

Those groundhogs better be right, can't come too soon for me. Shovelling has lost its novelty, and I can think of a lot better ways to get a little exercise.

Back to Brentwood Bay

My brother Peter moved to Vancouver Island just north of Victoria shortly after I moved away from Vancouver a few years ago. He lives with his partner Pat there and I visited them just over a week ago.

I took the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo and then drove down the Malahat to get to my brother's place just north of Victoria. It probably would have been quicker to drive through Vancouver to Tsawwassen and take the ferry to Swartz Bay, but I was trying to catch an early ferry and did not want to contend with rush hour traffic through the city. The drive down the Malahat was far more pleasant.

We had a late lunch at a local restaurant on the water and then drove to Mount Douglas to catch the view.


Peter and I went kayaking on Brentwood Bay the next day, it was similar to the last time two years ago. Good weather, calm water, lots of jellyfish. Peter saw an otter in the water.



The jellyfish are neat to see, small and white floating at different depths in flocks? schools? clouds? What do you call a bunch of jellyfish all floating along together? We paddled around in the little inlet looking for them, they were not spread out evenly but in a kind of jellyfish river through the bay. There were also a couple of really large jellyfish, more than a foot across and two feet or more in length swimming along by themselves. Maybe the big ones aren't interested in company.


The last day I was there Peter's partner Pat took me on a little tour of the local farm markets. The area is full of small farms, and many of them have their own produce stands. One place sold honey and honey-related products (beeswax candles, honeycombs, and such). They had different kinds of honey and the saleswoman let me sample the flavours of the different kinds of honey they sold.

This particular place has been in the local news recently because the province has had a ban on importing bees but that ban was recently lifted and this honey producer was the first to take advantage of that. This was controversial; some were saying that lifting the ban would allow bee diseases to enter the province. Pat asked the woman about this controversy. She responded that it was true that they had imported bees, but they imported them from one of the Prairie provinces, i.e., not across the border. And, they sent their own people to the seller to inspect the bees before bringing them back to Vancouver Island.

She said that experienced beekeepers can tell how healthy honey bees are just by visual inspection. Plus, she said, all their hive sites are at the north end of the island far from any other honey producers, so even if the bees they imported turned out to be diseased, they were in effect quarantined by distance from other hives.

She felt they were acting responsibly and the recent media attention to this transaction was unwarranted. She was quite unembarrassed or upset by the question and happy to fill us in on her perspective on the issue.

We also visited markets that sold a variety of local produce, Pat did a little shopping at each place. I picked up a few items as well, all that fresh produce was really tempting. I was impressed by the variety of what was available.

At one market I saw an arrow sign saying To Animals. I followed the sign around the back of the market building. It was raining and I could see no pens or cages, just one duck and one chicken standing in the rain by the driveway. The chicken was trying to stay dry under a small tree, the duck was less concerned about getting wet. Its face was covered in some red structure that made it look a bit like a rooster or turkey, and it had a few white feathers on its head that stood up in a crest when I approached it. I could tell just how nervous the duck was by the movement of its crest, if I stood still the crest relaxed and if I moved it rose again.

I took the afternoon ferry from Swartz Bay to Tsawwassen to return to the mainland. That put me south of Vancouver right at rush hour and I was treated to an almost two hour drive through the city to get home. Pat thought I should avoid the Malahat in the rain, but driving back to North Vancouver from Tsawwassen during rush hour is no treat either. I think I would have preferred to take my chances on the Malahat.

Gambier Island and Deep Cove

I am finding it difficult to keep this blog up to date, I am not inclined to spend an hour or so every couple of days working on it. On Friday I had nothing planned and thought it would be a good day to get caught up on my blog, but it was a sunny warm day and the thought of staying indoors to work on a computer on such a day was off-putting. I went kayaking instead, wore myself out completely, with no energy when I returned to do anything but eat and watch TV.

So.

Since my last blog post I have visited my brother on Vancouver Island, visited Windsong Cohousing with Sam, spent lots of time with Kim and baby Eva, and had meals with several old friends from when I used to live here.

I am planning to spend more time with Eva and then Thanksgiving with family, a brief trip to Sechelt, and then travelling homeward. Right now I am on Gambier Island for the last time this year.

Saturday was a great sunny day, Sunday is "mizzly"---somewhere between misty and drizzly---so we are reading, blogging and marking homework. The dog is sleeping. Johanna and I will leave the island later today and have dinner in Horseshoe Bay, Dave will stay on to continue working on the deck he is building on the cabin.



I went out to Deep Cove on Indian Arm to do a bit of paddling on Friday. It turned out that there was no place in Deep Cove to actually launch from, even though there is a kayak rental place there. So I drove down the road to Cates Park next to the First Nations reserve and launched there. Cates Park is on a point of land separating Burrard Inlet (Vancouver Harbour) from Indian Arm. I paddled up the Arm as far as Deep Cove and then turned around and paddled back.

The first half was calm and windless, with only the wake of passing cruisers to contend with; I guess they were all headed up the Arm to spend a sunny weekend on the water. But about the time I decided to turn around and go back the breeze came up and I was paddling upwind to get back. A bit strenuous. By the time I got back to the small beach in Cates Park near where my truck was parked, I had just enough energy left to get the kayak back on the roofrack and that was it.

But it was lovely to be out on the water.

On the ferry trip to the island Saturday morning I happened to see an old friend on the ferry, so I got to spend the forty minute ferry ride visiting with her. She lives in Sechelt so I may see her again when I am visiting there, we may even go kayaking. I have to say that I have done very little paddling this year and it seems kind of dumb to lug the kayak all the way out here for the very few hours I have spent actually using it.

On Gambier Island we are seeing lots of deer, they are out in force scarfing up everything edible.



Yesterday we walked down to the wharf and saw a school of herring off the wharf. It was a very dense mass of small black fish just below the surface of the water.



On the wharf railings and nearby rocks perched some rather sated-looking seagulls. I guess they were taking a break from fishing.


The school of fish seemed to move almost as a single organism. Periodically the mass would develop an "arm" that would flow under the wharf to the other side and then back again.


At one point it flowed out and around a piling and back to the main body of fish, forming a ring around the piling. When we made noise on the wharf the "arm" would quickly withdraw back to the main school. It was an eerie sight and I wore out my camera battery trying to take pictures of it.

I will describe my visit with my brother and with various friends in subsequent posts.

In the jungle

Friday was a little cooler than the previous few days, there was a breeze and the temperature was forecast to only go up to 24C. So I cleaned up the truck in preparation for leaving.

We live close to the railway tracks, which is generally considered not a good thing due to the noise and vibration of passing trains. But we only have GO trains, the green and white double decker commuter trains. They are short and zip by quite fast, and mostly run during rush hour.

The interesting thing about being near the train tracks is that they provide a corridor for wildlife to come into the city, so we regularly see creatures that don't normally live in city centres. We
have rabbits and possums and hawks and redwing blackbirds. Plus the usual raccoons and skunks.

There's a spot where the street passes close to the tracks, a small stretch of no-man's-land filled with trees and shrubs. A few locals have taken it on to keep the area clear of garbage and planted in native flowers. When you walk by that spot it is raucous with birds. I am not sure what kind of birds, maybe robins maybe something else, but they sure are noisy. It's like being in a jungle listening to them. I've seen people walking that stretch of street and stopping
under the trees there just to listen to the birds.

Between the snow and the jungle birds, this is definitely a magical faerie land.

Speaking of critters...

We knew we had mice in the house, it's that time of year and the evidence has been mounting. Yesterday afternoon I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and sure enough, there was a tiny mouse scurrying between the closet door and the heat vent in my livingroom.

Throughout the afternoon and early evening I caught glimpses of this tiny creature (or one of its peers!) in various places in the livingroom and hallway. As the room darkened (I'm not a big fan of bright lights after dark) the mouse got bolder and forayed into the middle of the room, inches from my feet. I wondered if it was a youngster, it's head was at least half of its total size.

Later I saw it heading into my bedroom and that worried me, I was not up for dealing with it in my bed! However, chasing mice is counterproductive and I have no traps.

Later still, Gretel found a dead mouse at the foot of my stairs. We surmise that Dobby got it. Having gotten to know this particular mouse a little bit, I was somewhat saddened by its abrupt demise. But I am glad that Dobby takes his vermin-catching responsibilities seriously.

Don't palm us off

In the righthand column of my blog I have a link to a website called Zooborns. It posts photos and videos of very cute animal babies from zoos all over the world. I followed the link today to yesterday's Zooborn post, Perth's newest primate: "Don't palm us off!"

For many people, zoos are controversial. Keeping sentient animals in cages, imprisoned for their entire lives for our pleasure and edification just seems wrong, if not cruel. My own position on this is that due to human overpopulation and environmental destruction, many of these animal species will probably not survive the 21st century in the wild, they will go extinct. Zoo populations will be all that remain, despite our efforts to protect wild populations. From that perspective alone, I approve of zoos.

Zoos also help to educate us and particularly our young about the importance of these animals to our world and about their precarious existence and the need for more effort to protect them. And there have been great advances in how zoo animals are taken care of, modern zoos are a far cry from the zoos of my childhood. I remember very clearly the bears in small concrete and steel cages at the old Toronto Riverdale Zoo (which is now a farm setting with mostly farm animals in paddocks and barns).

Anyway, if you go take a look at this particular Zooborn post, you will see lovely photos and a video of a mother orangutan and her baby. Most endearing. But as well, there is an important message about how orangutans are endangered by oil palm plantations in Malaysia. The Perth Zoo has started a campaign (Don't Palm Us Off) to have obligatory labelling of palm oil in products, to increase awareness of how huge oil palm plantations cause the deaths of thousands of orangutans in the wild every year. Take a look at the (just under) 2 minute video on that Zooborn webpost.

Down to the fair

On Tuesday Tristan and I went to the Royal Winter Fair again. We went last year too. It's the upscale version of a country fair, with lots of booths selling stuff I wouldn't normally associate with a fair. But they do still have lots of cows and goats and sheep and chickens, lots of judging competitions and horse shows.


We caught the bus near our street and it took us all the way to the Fair in downtown Toronto. They have to change the route of this particular bus because of the Fair, but our driver apparently did not know that and proceeded down the route the bus usually took. And very quickly we were surrounded by cows! The driver didn't know what to do. He slowed right down and started wondering out loud if maybe he was supposed to be somewhere else. Then there was a barricade across the street and he knew he was supposed to be somewhere else! So he made a right turn onto a street that was not part of the route; he was laughing, we were all laughing, as he created a new route for his bus. I pointed out the entrance to the Fair to him and he pulled over to let us off. No bus stop, not even a bus route, but we were in exactly the right place!

We started with the Superdog show. It's great fun, the dogs seem to hugely enjoy their moments in the spotlight. There was one performance of a border collie salsa dancing with his Brazilian trainer; I'm not sure who I was more impressed with, the handsome Brazilian or the amazing collie!

Sorry, couldn't photograph the Brazilian---I mean the border collie---my camera couldn't pick up things in motion so I only got photos of people and animals that weren't moving too fast.


We collected a few free food samples and pamphlets, checked out the poultry. Male turkeys were strategically placed in adjacent cages so they were in a constant state of arousal, fanning their tails and slowly turning to display themselves in all directions, gobbling all the way. Not to be outdone, roosters crowed and ducks chattered.


We watched some lambs being judged. The lambs did not seem too happy about this, the judge kept pinching their backs and thighs; I suspect he was checking how meaty they were and the lambs knew darn well what that was about. Later I saw three of the lambs huddled together in a pen, they looked like they had been through hell and were just standing there, shell-shocked.


We saw lots of jumping horses, a few little horses pulling little two-wheeled carts with very fancily dressed drivers, and four teams of big Percherons pulling huge wagons. The Percherons were impressive, each team consisted of four huge horses decked out in black and silver collars and harnesses, the wagons each held two drivers in cowboy hats, one to hold the reins and the other to hold the whip. The whip-holder didn't actually use the whip, but when the wagons halted it was his job to jump down and hold the horses still. I have no idea how they judged these teams, but in any case the team from Nova Scotia won.


The last jumping show we watched had horses and riders from all over the world and the jumps were quite high and wide. I found myself holding my breath as each horse attempted to clear a jump, it was quite suspenseful. The course was in two parts, if a horse and rider made it through the first part without any problem then they could continue into the second part, but more than half were disqualified after the first part. One rider was thrown from his horse after a jump, but he was OK and everyone applauded as he left the arena. Getting applause for falling in a competition may seem odd, but it did seem like a nice thing to do.

Tristan always wants to go into the car races, so I bought him one round. They are little radio-controlled cars and it takes the kids most of the race to learn how to control their cars, but if one kid manages to get his car across the finish line then he gets a little checkered flag. Maybe next year Tristan!


Then there is the petting farm, for two bucks you get a little cup of feed and can dole it out to the goats and llamas and calves who clamour at the fence. It is complete raucous chaos but of course the kids love it, and the goats and llamas gladly compete for the food treats.


I was tired before I went, utterly exhausted by the time we got home in the late afternoon. But I love the Fair, and we had a good time.