A Healthy-Choice Rat!

We need to catch a healthy-choice rat that comes into our kitchen at night.  He eats only organic, home-grown vegetables, fruit and grains.  He can even sniff out this fine food through plastic wrap and munches through to get to my choice food.  He turns his nose up at anything in a flashy package including ramen noodles, biscuits and sweets.  What a discerning rat!

Tomato.

Okay, so I was getting fed up with the rat taking out all my sapodillas, tomatoes and other fruits in season.  I was waking up to a gnawed piece of fruit in the basket every day.  It was really frustrating because I was waiting for the fruit to ripen and the rat was getting them when they were perfect to eat.  You can imagine how self-righteous I was feeling…all this hard work in the garden and the rat gets it!!  That’s not right!!

I proceeded to store all my good food in closed baskets and then got the rat trap out for Gnome to set up.  He asked me for some food for bait and I got out some cheese.  He gave me a funny look because it came out of a packet.  He looked like he wanted to say something but then felt that he better not.

I didn’t know what his problem was…don’t you catch rats with cheese??  I’ve seen it in cartoons.

Well the next morning, I found the traps empty still with the cheese bait.  Gnome had accidentally left an extra piece of cheese on a plate (in plain sight) on the kitchen table…that had not been taken either.  It was clear that the rat did not feel enticed by the cheese.

Gnome just looked at me…you know with that knowing look: I didn’t tell you so but you should no better look.

Hmmm…I really don’t want to bait the rat with my good stuff but it looks like I have no choice.   Oh dear…the bait will have to come from my lovely garden harvest…

Yummy Garden Food.

Goosie Tales!

Oh what a relief!  We had a really lovely heavy rain early this morning and a nice sleep in until 7am because it was so cool.  The last few weeks we have been getting up at 4am to start at 6am which is the coolest time of the morning.  It’s been really exhausting and the heat has been relentless.

Anyway, our goosie with the broken leg is recovering.  It is actually able to weight bear and managing to limp around goosie hospital.  It’s getting a bit lonely so I am allowing 1 to 2 hour visits from fellow goslings (one at a time).  It gets a bit over-crowded with all of them twittering , messing around with food and pooping.  Over-night stays are not allowed…way too much carrying on…Munchkin and Gnome don’t take kindly to interrupted sleep!

Oor Goosie!

Operation: Get broody turkey sitting on goose eggs unfortunately failed.  The Duchess (aka Female turkey) was a champion and sat the thirty days (and more) but none of the eggs hatched.  We’ve read that goose eggs need to be turned on a daily basis (by the goose or by human) but once the duchess was sitting, there was no budging her.  We thought that it was just best to let her do her Mama thing and wait it out.  So in conclusion, it doesn’t look like turkeys can set goose eggs because they are too heavy for them to be turned.  Oh well, we tried!

Sitting Turkey.

The other baby goslings are doing normal baby gosling things like twittering, pecking at each other, eating grass and pooping.  We take them for supervised walks at the pond area and sit with them while they do their goosie thing.  The other day, Gnome’s mum phoned us and said,

“How are my grand-children?”

The grand-kids are doing very well:

Goosie Walks.

Home schooling has started because we want to make them into proper little scholars…unfortunately they keep on falling asleep every-time we open the book…perhaps we should review the goosie curriculum?

Intellectual Goosie Education.

Giving Goosie A Chance!

About a week ago we found  one of our goslings, 3 days old at the time, sitting immobile and unable to stand.  It was twittering away to itself and appeared unperturbed.  On closer examination, it appeared to have broken its right leg.  We are not sure what happened because he was fine before; maybe a guinea pig had accidentally trod on its leg or a clumsy gosling had sat on him…who knows?

Since it was unable to move, it was not eating or drinking.

Gnome, accident and emergency specialist said that it would probably take 4 to 6 weeks for the leg to completely heal.  He further explained that this would mean that we had to open up a 24 hour hospital care unit for the little one.  In other words, this meant one to one care, attention and feeding.  He asked me:

“I know that we are both very busy right now.  Munchkin, do you want to look after the goosie?”

I thought about it carefully because there are plenty of things to do on the farm and many other things that we do including seeing patients and making products.   Do I really want to use up my time looking after one goosie when there are many healthy goosies to give the time and attention to?

Oh well, this one was too cute for me to say “No.”

Sleeping Goosie.

As Gnome says,

“Cuteness goes a long way…”

Goosie Hospital is officially open; run by Matron Munchkin!!

Goosie Hospital.