It doesn’t take much to send me into paroxysms of delight nowadays. A rabbit, some fruit trees and some blue metal will just about do it.
The mud has been steadily rising here, threatening to swallow my house whole. Fifteen ducks paddling in it have been making it worse and when an equal number of chooks stand around the front door yelling for food, while also scratching through the mud for interesting grubs, it can only end in disaster.
I put my foot down when I started to feel like it might just be easier to mud ski around parts of my paddock and insisted that we order some blue metal (crushed rock) to cover the muddy areas with.
It’s interesting to see who you know in our relatively small community and the woman on the other end of the phone when we ordered, was a girl that I had gone to school with. She arranged for everything to be dropped off that very same afternoon, while I imagined a future in which sliding through the mud wouldn’t exist. Blissful thoughts.
Of course, like all things possibly related to Murphy, the truck arrived while I was in the middle of collecting eggs that hadn’t been collected while I was away. There I was standing in my daggiest clothes, with blackberry leaves caught in my hair, and my shirt pulled up to make a basket for the eight eggs I had just collected, three of them covered heavily in chook poo.
Never let me tell you that my life is glamorous.
Chook poo and a hoisted up shirt aside, Isaac and Amy were also outside with me.
There is only so much consoling you can do when your shirt is full of eggs and shit and your toddler is trying to flail on the ground in duck poo and mud, while a truck roars and beeps in the background.
On the upside, no one got squashed, we didn’t smash any eggs and duck poo washes off small boys quite easily. Thank god.
Nathan spent the day shifting blue metal yesterday and I must say, I am not missing the mud slide. Not at all.
***
Today of course, I was hunter gathering, as I’m wont to do. This is no ordinary hunter gathering mind you, this is bare hands and unsuitable shoes type hunter gathering.
First, I picked out some new fruit trees, while holding fourteen kilos of toddler on my hip and smiling at the woman who was helping me. THEN, I insisted that Isaac hug his grandmother while I sorted out my gift certificate and Nathan bought new mattresses in the next door shop.
And then I came home and caught a rabbit, with my bare hand. Only one hand, the other hand was full of an egg that my chooks had laid.
Yes, you read that right, I caught a rabbit. WITH MY HAND.
Behold! My awe inspiring rabbit catching abilities.
Okay, so it was only a baby and it had run into an old cupboard and possibly all I did was flip the cupboard over onto its back so that the rabbit couldn’t jump out, but I CAUGHT IT.
There is something to be said for being able to announce to the collective members of a room (front yard) “Hey, so I just caught a rabbit. BY MYSELF. Want to see?” and then actually produce a live rabbit for the gooing and the gaahing over.
Hunter gathering went well today.
Now if I can just find where my bloody poultry are hiding their nests, I’ll be lots happier.
***
The bunny was so small that I couldn’t be bothered killing it. I don’t mind shooting, but there is just something so personal about breaking a neck, or chopping off a head, you know? Plus, with all the effort I went to to catch the little thing, it hardly seemed fair that then I would then be the one gutting and skinning it and getting all up and personal with its sneeze making fur.
And I might have had a Watership Downs flashback and wondered who was waiting for the baby rabbit at home and not been able to stop myself personifying it.
[Digression: The cat was waiting for the baby rabbit when I went back to let it go. He had been patiently sitting on the piece of tin I had blocked the opening with, waiting for his dinner to make its way out of the box. Now I know both why the cat is so fat and why there was a baby rabbit in the middle of my paddock in the first place. Curiosity satisfied.]
Comments
13 responses to “I am such a country girl”
Did the blue metal provide blissful non poo-mud slipping? Or did it just drown in the mud? Well done you, I would have broken an egg for sure. Also, the rabbit catching. You are some sort of zen hunter gatherer master.
The blue metal is providing a lovely crunchy non-mud setting to walk on. It’s great.
Wow what a Woman, I swear if I had seen that rabbit it would have been chasing me……cause I would have been running!
Funny story about chickens, when I was a little girl I hated getting the eggs those chickens use to flip and flap around me I was so scared of them, so if I was ever naughty (never) my grandmother would say…. I’ll send you to get the eggs! I always tried to be a Very Good Girl at grandma’s.
You my friend are amazing!!
Always Wendy
Our chooks are constantly following me everywhere. At feed time, I can’t walk without stepping on their feet (although it’s usually the ducks I tread on!)
oh god, the mud… the mud.
I’ve just been refusing point blank to go out into our ‘back yard’. What with the building and all the rain…. ugh. But after a few minutes on Friday morning when I was sure my big white bus was going to get bogged on our own drive way, we too went and purchased some blue metal this weekend… who’d have thought I could be so joyful over crushed rock.
And ooh impressed by the rabbit capturing!
Isn’t the mud hideous? Half of our yard isn’t getting ANY sun at the moment and we’ve had more rain this year than in previous years. I agree, who would have thought crushed rock would be so exciting?
That actually made me laugh-out-loud at the whole: “Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!” thing. Amy and Isaac should be so impressed!
I caught a rabbit accidentally once, as a kid (it bolted out of its burrow as I happened to be peering in, and I grabbed it.) Still remains one of the highlights of my childhood!
We had that mud earlier in the year, gravel is wonderful.
And I’m another who wishes I knew where the chooks are laying. The older ones seem to have got huffy and moved after using the same spot since Christmas, and we’re not sure when the younger ones will start. In the next few weeks, and I’m not looking forward to the enormous rotten clutches if it takes us a while to find them.
You are one of a kind Veronica. No-one else I know can claim that they caught a rabbit one-handed!!
I am never going to be a country girl… *shudder*
Unsuitable shoes?? Well, really!! Tsk Tsk.
Ha Ha, I’m laughing at you stomping through muddy duck poo.
Hooray for blue metal.
Now tell me, which fruit trees did you choose? I’m intensely curious.
And did the bunny survive? Or did the cat get it?
I don’t mind living in the city, btu if I had a choice I’d leave so fast I’d raise a cloud of dust. Even in this rainy weather.
Ohhh I love how you took me into Country Life for a day…I could imagine it all, a whole lot of spontaneous fun and excitement!!! The rabbit looks adorable, I couldn’t kill it either…well done country girl!!! 🙂
Please tell me that the bunny is ok? Or as ok as it could be, when you released it into the field of evergreen grass, mid 20s temperatures and unlimited sandy soil for burrows. Which you did, right? (And if you didn’t: please let me have my (dis)illusions)