The Pecking Order - scientific observations on a farm

Yesterday (Mon Dec 29)...I showed Sujin how to feed the animals then we cleaned and reorganized one of the sheds. While we were reorganizing, Rhys drove up with an envelope in his hands - it was a letter from one of my friends! What a nice surprise! Oh yeah, Sujin and I caught the ducklings sneak into the garden again! They are small enough to squeeze through the fence and eat the lettuces when we aren't around. Those little buggers. When they saw us coming, they made a lot of noise --- the parents on the other side screaming at their kids to come back over and the kids frantically telling them "ahhh, they're coming! they're coming! help us!". The ducklings scurried around wildly looking for an escape back to safety. They all made it back except for one. That one was losing its mind with fright and waddling around in desperation for an escape route. As I tried to catch him to put him back, he panicked even more and the quacks became more frantic from both sides. Finally, he found an opening in the fence and squeezed on through back to his family.

In the evening we had soft shell tacos for dinner since Allison's neice is visiting with her best bud. Afterwards, we played Wii Fit....my calculated age is 34 yrs! Hahaha.

Today (Tues Dec 30) was quite an exciting day. The ducks all come up to me and quack loudly when they know I'm there to feed them. They get so close that I was able to touch a duckling very briefly before he ran away. Ducks don't like to be touched and the parents don't like it much either if you get close to their babies. The babies are so cute and they are gettng bigger. Only 2 weeks ago they were yellow...now they are turning white and their tail feathers are developing. Soon they will be too big to fit through the fence to eat our lettuces!

I was excited to hear that I had a package to pick up at the post office! The funny thing is the mailman wrote on the pick-up stub that the package is for "Neville". Hahahaha! Ohhh boy, this is not the first time people have messed up my name! I was told that Neville is a very common name here. Um, ok. Anyways, Allison took me to town and I got my package. I got a whole bunch of goodies...all varieties of Pop Rocks! Australia has strict laws on foods and other organic materials (like wood) sent into the country because they have such a fragile ecosystem. So candy is the only thing that's safe I guess.

Today I also layed newspapers around the garden bed and covered them with a layer of sawdust and another layer with woodchips. This is to prevent weeds from growing because sunlight is blocked out, the sawdust supposedly sucks up nitrogen, and the woodchips are heavy enough to prevent the wind from blowing the sawdust away. Furthermore, it looks nice.

From the living room window in the wwoof house I can see the chickens. I was observing the "Chicken Pecking Order". This is their fight for dominance and it happens more than once every day. I observed 2 chooks flap their wings, jump up and chest bump each other (just like the males of the human species do occasionally). Then they stared each other down beak-to-beak with foreheads touching until one walked away. The one who walked away came back and this time, they both lowered their heads and had another intense stare-down. Finally, the one who surrendered last time turned away again.

A weird observation I have noticed but forgot to mention are the bathrooms here in Oz. Firstly, no one says bathroom, restroom, or washroom. It is referred to as the toilet or sometimes dunny. Secondly, the toilet has 2 buttons to flush - a 1/2 flush and a full flush. It makes sense since there had been a 7 yr drought in this country. Thirdly, the toilet is separated from the sink and shower. So the toilet is in a tiny room by itself. Adjacent to that room is another room with the sink and shower. These 2 rooms are in no way connected to each other - they have their own doors. Hmmm, so you can imagine how clean that doorknob for the toilet is, eh? Hehehe.