The Armchair Traveller

  Chapter 5 Animals

  David and I have had animals since shortly after we married. We started with a boxer dog, Ginny, just before our first son was born, and after a few in between we now have Roy. Roy is unfortunately not very bright. He has a small scar on his head from being bitten as a puppy and we explain to visitors that it is where he had his brains removed. He makes up for his dimness with a keen enthusiasm for life, particularly in chasing Toyota cars, no other make, that drive into our farm. He has perfected the skill of hanging onto the plastic bumpers with his teeth and running alongside the car at anything up to forty kilometres per hour. This has proved to be a very expensive habit and most Toyota drivers only visit us once.

  Cody is a large friendly Labrador retriever who likes to carry things in his mouth. He adopted one of the cats when it was a kitten and would carry it around with its whole head inside his mouth. Visitors would be appalled to be met at the gate by what appeared to be a dead cat dangling from the dog’s mouth. Fortunately the cat eventually grew too fat for this and now curls up to sleep with the dogs instead. Cody has resorted to carrying an avocado in his mouth through which he makes sinister growling sounds which are meant to be welcoming but have the effect of sending anxious visitors scuttling to the safety of their cars. Roy merely attempts to lick people’s ears.

  Number two son was once inspired by a television programme on dogs to train ours to follow an obstacle course. He set up a fearsome array of obstacles on the front lawn using sacks, planks of wood and tin drums then set about training the dogs to follow it. He went on the principle of learning by demonstrating and despite the heat of the day he began the training session. The dogs joined in with great enthusiasm at the start, lured by the biscuits in his pockets, but as the biscuits disappeared so did their interest. Number two son determinedly spent a good hour showing the dogs how to jump, crawl, and roll, demonstrating these skills with constant encouraging cries to the unresponsive audience. This intrigued the dogs who lay in the shade with a grandstand view congratulating themselves on how well they had trained one small boy, giving him the odd bark of encouragement whenever it looked as if his energy might be flagging.

  We have seven cats – too many at times but badly needed come winter when the mouse population tries to move indoors. The boss of the cats and dogs is Cameo. He is pink in colour and he has developed a compensating macho attitude. When he was young, the girls would hitch him to a small cart and watch him tow their Barbie dolls around but nowadays no one would venture to suggest such a thing. His favourite hobby is to lie invitingly on his back until the unsuspecting victim rubs him lovingly on the tummy. He then sinks his teeth firmly into the hand before running off with a satisfied smirk.

  The dogs steer well clear of Cameo. One day David and the children were standing around the cherry tree sampling the fruit when one of the dogs had the misfortune to relieve itself on the clump of grass in which Cameo was asleep. There was a snarl as Cameo sprang out. Discretion being the greater part of valour, David and the children either ran or hastily climbed the cherry tree. Cameo stood on his hind legs with claws outstretched and ran at the dogs. The dogs promptly took off with their tails firmly tucked between their legs and hid in the back of the kennel. Cameo prowled in front of the kennel hurling insults for twenty minutes before stalking off. From that day they have given him a wide berth.

  Another cat, Blackie, used to come and walk along the rim of the spa pool where David and I would be relaxing after a hard day’s work. He rubbed his head across the back of David’s neck until one day, patience exhausted, we nudged him into the water. Blackie wasn’t seen for two days after that. On the third night when we sat in the spa pool, he leapt from the bushes with an eldricht howl then walked calmly away leaving us gibbering in fright. Honour was obviously satisfied, as he never bothered us in the spa pool again.

  We have had a succession of donkeys. The first was Penelope who we bought as a foal. We travelled to see her with the children, a friend, and two cheerful American girls Lucy and Diana. We fell in love with her on the spot and decide that as we were driving the large stationwagon we would take her home in it. Younger son sacrificed his sweatshirt to tie over her eyes so she wouldn’t be frightened then we lifted her in before piling in ourselves. Lucy kept saying, ‘My Mom is never going to believe this! Nine people and a donkey in a car!’ and she phoned her mother in the States as soon as we arrived back at the farm to tell her.

  We eventually sold Penelope to someone who wanted to use her for breeding purposes and purchased Benson. Benson had been the baby of an elderly couple who had trained him to pull a small chariot with two to three children riding on it. The chariot was very safe as if anyone was worried about the speed he or she could simply step off the back. Not that speed is ever much of a worry with donkeys – getting them to start at all is an art in itself. They love to follow but if worried will stop dead and are very reluctant to start moving again. Benson usually moved if offered peppermints but that was not always guaranteed.

  Sophie came along as company for Benson. She was old and placid and fairly short. Our foreign visitors would get great excitement from riding on her back even though their legs practically touched the ground on either side.

  The children played all sorts of games involving the donkeys, as they were very safe to be around. I treasure the memory of a determined three year old trying to get Sophie to drink the mixture he had made of sand and water. Putting the bowl in front of her head he would run to each of her back legs in turn to push – only to no avail. Sophie waited until he stopped pushing then stepped away whereon the angry child would shift the bowl and go through the whole process again.

  We currently have Topsy, another elderly Jenny, whose bray has the heart breaking sound of a jilted lover. She lives happily in the company of up to a dozen cattle beasts and is very agreeable to be ridden or patted by anyone.

  Most of our farm helpers like to get photos of themselves riding or patting the donkeys. One shy girl was afraid to go too close but I gave her a piece of bread so her companion could photograph her feeding the donkey. She leaned over the fence with her ample bosom and Benson reached out towards the bread. At the exact moment the photograph was taken he ignored the bread and planted his lips firmly on her breast instead – much to her chagrin and the hysterical laughter of her companion.

  We have a flock of geese that wander the gully until some moment, known only to them, is reached. At this time they split into two groups – ‘White Power’ and the ‘Filthy Few’, and hurl abuse at each other from opposite sides of the gully. We have a wild goose chase every couple of years to keep the numbers down but as it is a case of boiling them up with an old boot and eating the boot, we don’t bother eating them very often. They make a picturesque addition to the farm as they walk in a line down the hillside to the lake or when in full flight they land on the water.

  Most of our Asian farm helpers have never handled animals and it takes a lot of courage for them to stroke a dog or a calf. They are nearly all terrified of the cattle even when we assure them that the beasts only want to suck their fingers, having grown from handreared spoilt babies.

  We normally have a pig or two in residence, mainly to eat up the scraps and provide the Christmas ham. Visitors are usually surprised to find that pigs don’t smell and are actually very clean in their habits. For a time we had a wonderful natured sow named Dolores who was an excellent mother. As we were rather new to the pig-keeping bit we rather underestimated the ability of pigs to get through fences. It took an early morning visit to the vegetable garden by Dolores to motivate us into fixing the fences to a better standard. Unfortunately when Dolores had babies we discovered that even though she was securely fenced, her offspring felt it their mission in life to search for holes in the fence and wriggle through to explore the wide world outside.

  David had a phone call one day from an irate neighbour complaining that our little pigs were playing on his lawn tennis court. David’s
response of ‘Take their balls off them and send them home’ did nothing to improve neighbourly relations although the resulting fence we built has been pig proof to this day.

  Not everyone understands the need for fences. We had two young Swedish surfers, Carl and Michael, working for us one summer. They were staying in a youth hostel and doing paid work for us. They had an unfortunate tendency to call in sick whenever the surf was up. One Friday afternoon we left them trimming tree branches beside the gully while we went to town. They had been instructed to turn the electric fence off before they started so that the branches could easily be picked off it and stacked. Unfortunately the wind came up, the surf came up and Carl and Michael leapt into their car with a cry of joy and headed for the beach. They left the fence not only turned off but also pushed to the ground by heavy branches in at least three places. It wasn’t until the next day that we found all our stock wandering around feasting on kiwifruit buds and young avocado trees. A few hours mad panic ensued before we managed to round them up, muttering curses on surfers in general to anyone who would listen.

  I once expressed the desire to have a pair of white doves looking picturesque in the garden. David was a little less enthusiastic as he had kept homing pigeons as a young lad, and knew their habits, but he eventually gave in to my pleading and built a wonderful rustic dovecote in the middle of the garden. We purchased two pair of white pigeons and after keeping them shut in for a few weeks to make sure they would stay, we released them. They treated the dovecote with loathing and disdain and to this day not one pigeon has even sat on the thing, despite my leaving quantities of food up there. The local sparrows on the other hand, regard it as a dream come true and are pathetically grateful for any crumbs placed there. The cats have not been slow to spot this and tend to sleep there in wait for some unfortunate bird to alight into their waiting jaws.

  Soon the pigeons started breeding as if there was no tomorrow. Walking around the garden became a frightening experience as pigeons perched on the branches of every tree like vultures, glaring at anyone who dared disturb them by entering their territory. Every morning we were woken by flocks of them quarrelling and stamping on the iron roof above our bedroom. Occasionally there would be a loud bang as one of them misjudged the wires of the TV aerial and we would see a little pile of white feathers floating to the earth. When the cost of feeding all these pigeons became too great we sold a lot, gave a lot away then began a contraceptive regime where we meanly destroyed the eggs as they were laid. It has helped somewhat but there are still too many of the wretched things. They won’t even oblige us by looking attractive and friendly and co-operating for photographs. As soon as anyone produces a camera the pigeons fly to the roof of the house where they lurk behind the chimney, muttering, until the coast is clear.