R.I.P. Beebs

Friday 4 July 2014. An icy cold morning, while the construction guys are busy preparing to pour the concrete floor slab on the extension. I make my way through the icy grass to Goat Hill with the ration of hay for Jacko and Beebs’ breakfast.

(Above): Beebs with his glistening brindle/white coat and huge floppy ears on a better day.

Goats are strange creatures, pretty much loners, but always pleased to have some human company for a while, and these two are no different. As I round the corner of the garden at the veggie patch, I can hear Jacko’s maaa-maaa bleat. Nothing wrong with his ears, I muse.

(Above): Jacko, eager as ever to grab first at the bunch of hay. There is no word in the goat dictionary for “wait”. He insists on having a few sample morsels before you are permitted to put the bulk of the food into the feeding tray. That’s Jacko’s Rule.

He digs in without further invitation, creating sounds of someone chewing away at a crisp cucumber. He is able to make hay eating sound quite juicy and delicious.

I look around for Beebs, who always stands back for his horned colleague and prefers to eat separately. There is a strange silence. Ominous. I cannot see him.

I stroll around behind their goat-abode and see a brown furry form lying on the grass at the top of the slope. It is Beebs. There is no response to my call, which he would recognise.

Whilst we tend to personify animals, I must emphasise that Beebs was treated as a family pet and not as livestock, so we give him a burial befitting your trusty dog or favourite cat. Tyler kindly acts as grave-digger prepares the grave at the bottom end of the hill. It is tough going, hard clay ground strewn with plenty stones and small rocks.

We act as pall-bearers, carrying the limp carcass down the long sloping pathway, with Jacko in tow. I am sure he understands absolutely nothing of the current situation, or about the “journey” being undertaken by the Late Beebs, but nevertheless he tags along to see what is happening.

We reach the “cemetery” spot, which is ready the accept its first resident, and Jacko starts nibbling at some fresh roots which had been dug up by the grave-dig. I’ve heard of funeral wakes, but never where the mourners starts gobbling the nosh before the burial! But, hey, that’s the World of Goats for you…

(Above): Having completed the necessaries, we pack some rocks a-la-dogs-breakfast style to allow for a bit of subsidence, and gather up the pickaxe and shovel.

(Above): Ever-curious Jacko stands at the graveside for quite some time after we have left. From the top of Goat Hill, I can see him, still standing down there. Who knows what is going through his head? If anything at all… He’s a livestock, after all.

A goat has died. Quite ordinary on any farm, nothing earth-shattering. However, Beebs will be missed by the family, perhaps he will be missed by Jacko… if Jacko is intelligent to notice that he is now alone.

G-Men B&B

If you were to meet our G-Man Team face-to-face, I am certain your comments would be nothing but very favourable. They are two of the friendliest creatures around. Really they are.

When I called on them between showers this morning, Jacko (above left) was still in bed, dozing a bit, while Beebs (above right) ventured out to the fence to greet me. He gave a couple cute little bleats, as if in conversation about his late-sleeping friend.

“Today is the day that I go to Mr Palmer to get your scoff, Beebs,” I mentioned to him quietly, as if in confidence.

Beebs nodded knowingly, as if he understood. Who am I to query whether he understands or not?

Around 1:00pm I met Mr Palmer in the parking lot at Kapiti Signs in Waikanae – our meeting might have looked a bit like a drug deal going down, I suppose. Our consignment was one of weed, on the back of his ute (pick-up), covered with a grey waterproof tarpaulin, which made it even more suspicious…

(Above): A short while later I arrived home with the G-Men’s supplies: Bed and Breakfast – perhaps more accuratel0y “S & H” instead of “B & B”: Straw and Hay. Our Toyota Wish is described as a seven-seater wagon by the manufacturers. However, in livestock farming parlance, I guess a 4-baler would be more accurate… It is a tight squeeze, but the 4 bales fit quite comfortably when the back seats are down.

(Above): Straw is … well… As light as straw…. not very heavy. A full bale is considerably heavier than one might think – similar situation when handling a bale of wool, I’d guess.

(Above): From the car outside, I shifted the food and bedding out of reach of the adverse elements into the garden shed by trundler, straw (comfy) bedding at the back and hay (yummy) breakfast in the front. Although Jacko has a habit of chewing fresh straw as well.

Its a bit like your monthly shop, I suppose: clean sheets from the laundry and Weet-Bix from the supermarket…

Bennie and Sophie in Wonderland

Dogs. Strange creatures, dogs.

Dogs are really a loveable and affectionate part of the family. They certainly want to be in on the action, whatever the action may be, and wherever it may happen. This morning I went out strolling in the garden, camera in hand. Yes, two black Labradors, Bennie and Sophie, in tow following me.

Just in case. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but they were following, just in case.

Nearing the end of my excursion, I turned and started heading for Goat Hill to spend some time with residents Jacko and Beebs, who were naa-naa-ing in the distance. Now, that’s something they didn’t teach us at school: a horse neighs, a lion roars, an elephant trumpets, but what on earth do you call the sound made by goats? The naa-naa of a goat is called his bleat. Just like Mary’s famous little lamb.

English lesson done.

I had just turned, when it was as if the sky had fractured. Silently and suddenly, just like a earthquake – you might call it a sky-quake. Huge, and I really mean huge, rain-balls were pelting down and smashing themselves to smithereens on the ground around us. I was being soaked as I stood, undecided, trying to determine where the best cover might be. The camera instinctively crept under the front of my jumper, away from the deluge.

The front door was closest, but that was about thirty metres away. Usain Bolt would do it in 3 seconds on a good dry day and on a good track. This was not a good day, it was certainly not dry, and there was no track, just a watery concrete path. I am not the Usain Bolt I used to be, and I was wearing floppy gumboots. I calculated that I might need a fraction longer than 3 seconds.

There is a saying that the dog might get under your feet? Obviously not literally, unless they are those flat little sausage dogs. But in this instance, Bennie and Sophie really got under my feet. Both at the same time. This nearly resulted in me being floored. Luckily the dogs are large and I managed to remain upright, stumbling along, rainwater splashing everywhere.

The dogs were looking up at me, terrified at the unusual phenomenon.

“Where on earth are these huge balls of water coming from?” Bennie seemed to ask.

I could become scientific and give him an explanation, but that would be like water off a duck’s back. Not that he’d understand the simile. Nor, would he even want to know what a simile is…  He doesn’t do grammar, not even dog grammar. Grammar or no grammar, all three of us were almost at the safety of the front porch.

I was still about 10 metres from my target, water splashing up as my floppy gumboots dragged along the cement path. Then, as suddenly as they had started, the huge rain-balls stopped. The sky-quake had ended.

Prior to this little episode, I’d been strolling around like, I imagine, perhaps Lewis Carroll. Not physically like Mr Carroll, but like he might have done, collecting ideas for his type of writing of fiction, humour, word play, logic, fantasy and nonsense.

 
One of the most widely read and remembered tales in the English language, Alice in Wonderland.

So much of the Chartwell gardens could well have provided Lewis Carroll with ideas for his literary works. Simply dim your eyes a bit and use your imagination, and you’ll see the sights (and perhaps even hear the sounds) which might have inspired him. 

There goes a white rabbit, darting away between the shrubs. Drat, did you miss that?

We approached the top of a hill where the wood thickens. Sophie looked like a real giant – we were really approaching a Wonderland…

A sheltered little arena of moss-covered stones, where the Queen of Hearts may have been ordering “Off with their heads!” One cannot see any of this from the surrounding gardens.

Sitting on one of the number of large tree stumps, it is easy to imagine the Cheshire Cat with its mischievous grin, sitting on the branch above, where it appears and disappears at will, engaging Alice in amusing but sometimes vexing conversation.

At one point, the cat disappears gradually until nothing is left but its grin, prompting Alice to remark that she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat.

Although it bears no resemblance to The Sleepy Hollow Tree, I am totally fascinated by the hanging bark of this tree in our Mad Hatter’s Garden. The deep brown colour dominates the otherwise grey brush, kindling and branches of the surrounding growth.

G-Man Report

Some weeks ago, you may recall, I introduced the G-Men, namely Michael Jackson (so-called “Jacko”) and Justin Bieber (the so-called “Beebs”). They are not really Government Men, they’re Goats on long-term loan from a neighbour.

(Above): Black and white horned Jacko nibbles at a leafy snack. He would do well in a rugby scrum and is forever shunting his G-Mate out of the way – friendly nudges in G-Terms, I guess.

(Above): Skinny old big ears, Brown, tan and white Beebs grins for the camera. He is an avid eater and a great little runner. The friendliest goat you could ever imagine.

(Above): I am please to report that these people-friendly and snack-hungry darlings have settled in extremely well and have started making their little community on Goat Hill.

(Above): Jacko absolutely loves being hand-fed crunchy leaves and juicy peaches and apples, but take care, don’t drop the snacks to the ground – Jacko simply doesn’t do scraps off the dirty ground.

(Above): Beebs is the more agile and adventurous of the pair, and is frequently to be seen near the bottom of the hill (about 50 metres down) among the yummy thorny brambles – not sure if he’s find many berries there, but he is gradually consuming part of the landscape there, so it must be reasonably tasty, I suppose!

(Above): Jacko stands at the top of the Hill, looking down at fellow G-Man on the brambled slopes. Not sure of whether he feels like any brambles to day?