Saturday, March 25, 2006
Dead stuff
Country life involves much beauty as well as many vomity, dead-stuff moments.
The dogs are steadily eating the arse-end of a horse that died up in one of the back paddocks. They stink like dead flesh and poo. ("Would you like a little dead-horse on that dead horse?")
Then the old dog, Sydney, carked it. Patrick buried him in a deep hole in the back yard but unfortunately for Syd, it was not a case of R.I.P. as the horse-eating dogs soon sniffed him out and set about excavating him. We piled rocks, planks, more dirt, and tin on his grave but they were undeterred and just tunneled from further away. Bits of Sydney soon started turning up around the yard which I pretended not to see until I had to step over one of his teeth left on the front door mat.
We hit a deer on the road a few weeks ago which I still distresses me if I let it. Hitting a roo is one thing, but it's rather more disturbing to watch Bambi stumble disoriented off the road, look around and blink a few times with dark, glossy lashed eyes and then lay down, dead as a doornail. Rotting hogs, coyotes, raccoons and skunks on the freeway evoke less compassion in me. And I only say sorry once now to the cockroaches as I smash them with a shoe and pitch them into the fire.
Other gross dead things I have seen recently are turtles, armadillos and buzzards - all casualties of pickup trucks on the road and a poor blind mole which the dogs eventually harassed into passing.
Finally, I looked out of my bedroom window the other morning to see one of the mules laying stiff legged on her
side. Yup, she was finished too. Does this ever end? I mean, what do you DO with a dead 500kg mule??? Well, my education continues. You hitch her up with a chain to the back of your tractor and haul her off to a ditch far away for nature to take care of business. I cried for her cold carcass but Patrick, well seasoned in farm animal death just said "Oh well, the coyotes have got to eat too.” Again, the dogs to whom I continue to erroneously contribute human personalities, soon found her and dragged hoofs and femurs back to be gnawed at and strewn across the yard.
City life shields us from such realities.
The dogs are steadily eating the arse-end of a horse that died up in one of the back paddocks. They stink like dead flesh and poo. ("Would you like a little dead-horse on that dead horse?")
Then the old dog, Sydney, carked it. Patrick buried him in a deep hole in the back yard but unfortunately for Syd, it was not a case of R.I.P. as the horse-eating dogs soon sniffed him out and set about excavating him. We piled rocks, planks, more dirt, and tin on his grave but they were undeterred and just tunneled from further away. Bits of Sydney soon started turning up around the yard which I pretended not to see until I had to step over one of his teeth left on the front door mat.
We hit a deer on the road a few weeks ago which I still distresses me if I let it. Hitting a roo is one thing, but it's rather more disturbing to watch Bambi stumble disoriented off the road, look around and blink a few times with dark, glossy lashed eyes and then lay down, dead as a doornail. Rotting hogs, coyotes, raccoons and skunks on the freeway evoke less compassion in me. And I only say sorry once now to the cockroaches as I smash them with a shoe and pitch them into the fire.
Other gross dead things I have seen recently are turtles, armadillos and buzzards - all casualties of pickup trucks on the road and a poor blind mole which the dogs eventually harassed into passing.Finally, I looked out of my bedroom window the other morning to see one of the mules laying stiff legged on her
side. Yup, she was finished too. Does this ever end? I mean, what do you DO with a dead 500kg mule??? Well, my education continues. You hitch her up with a chain to the back of your tractor and haul her off to a ditch far away for nature to take care of business. I cried for her cold carcass but Patrick, well seasoned in farm animal death just said "Oh well, the coyotes have got to eat too.” Again, the dogs to whom I continue to erroneously contribute human personalities, soon found her and dragged hoofs and femurs back to be gnawed at and strewn across the yard.City life shields us from such realities.
# posted by petrahpatrick @ 9:18 PM 
