Animals, just about everywhere…..

A good way to concisely put people in the picture about the place where someone lives is, I think, to ask them the question “What do people talk about most, where you live?”
While I was at the sink doing my dishes just now, I was thinking about my adventure with the cow, the one that discovered the electric fence wasn’t working and decided the grass looked greener in my garden…. and I got onto thinking about animals and what a big part of life they are here, in rural southern Tasmania.

So here’s a snapshot of a fraction of the conversations that have come my way in the last 2 years….

“How do you keep the possums out of your vegetable garden?” (Answers are too numerous to recite here but the upshot is that most methods don’t work!)
“There’s always fresh road kill, everyday…. one good thing about that is that means there’s an awful lot of wildlife in this part of the world.”
“I saw a bandicoot under the lavender bush / Tasmanian devil in the chook yard / pademelon on that same road again /quoll by my front door / wallaby and its baby by the creek / bloody neighbour’s cat stalking birds again. I wish it would kill the rats”
“Look, there’s an eagle / a family of wrens / a flock of swans, plovers, crows / a robin on the fence / parrots in the banksia / a heron walking past the window”
“Did you notice the farmer has different cows / sheep / alpacas / goats? I had a cow in my garden!”
“ Did you know you can get Cygnet milk at the bottom butcher?”
“The rats and mice are shocking this year….. they ate the wiring in Bob’s car / they ate a hole in my fridge / live in my roof / my walls / what traps do you use?”
“Are your chooks laying? Have they been moulting? Do you feed your geese anything? How do you keep the mice out of your chook food? What kind of chooks do you have?”
Make what you will of this!