Repaired
Posted: Fri 28 December, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Travel 2 Comments »Today I’ve had the headlamp unit on the car replaced, following Boxing Day’s collision.
The damage didn’t look that serious – only the sidelight had stopped working completely – but a couple of bits of the lighting surround and backing had broken too, so it ended up needing a complete new headlamp unit. Joy.
All told, £150 for the repair/replacement. It’s an extra expense I could’ve done without, but it’s still heaps better than it would’ve been if I’d collided full-on with the deer.
Quietus
Posted: Fri 28 December, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic Leave a comment »Sanity has returned to the house – guests have gone, the place is tidy again, and Hound is calm. She’s been fairly stressed with people around, not knowing what’s going on, so she’s been a barky pain in the arse since Saturday.
But now today she’s fast asleep (well, except when we get deliveries of either post, or parcels) and a lot quieter than she has been. She’s also eaten a whole bundle of food – again, with being stressed, she hasn’t eaten a lot all week without coughing it all back up again – and is generally back to being more settled.
So yes, all told, sanity has returned. For a while, anyway.
Second Layer
Posted: Thu 27 December, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic Leave a comment »Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, on Christmas Day Gladys started laying eggs.
So that’s two out of three now, and all’s good with the world.
Bambi
Posted: Thu 27 December, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Driving, Travel 5 Comments »Last night, I had my first real accident in the car – nothing serious, and nothing overly damaged, but still my first real one.
Driving on one of the local(ish) country roads, I came round a corner and there was a deer crossing the road towards me, right at the white line. Absolutely nothing I could do – even though I was “only” going at 30mph, I didn’t even have time for an emergency stop, let alone to swerve or anything. As it was, I clipped it’s head, definitely killed it, but didn’t damage anything else.
In a lot of ways, it was just luck. Five seconds later, I’d have hit it straight on, and done a lot more damage to the car. Five seconds earlier, I would probably not even have seen the deer, or been able to easily avoid the stupid creature.
But instead, I came along at just that time, and killed it. I’m not happy about it, but I know there’s nothing else I could have done.
Not knowing the procedure, I called the police this morning (No, not on the 999 number) to check whether it needed to be reported, but apparently if it’s a deer it doesn’t need reporting. Dogs, cattle and the like yes, but not a deer. (The actual list is “horse, cattle, ass, mule, sheep, pig, goat or dog.” according to the Road Traffic Act). So I don’t need to report it.
All told, “just one of those things”. But still, I wish it hadn’t happened.
Christmas Review
Posted: Wed 26 December, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Festering Season 2 Comments »So, all things considered, Christmas Day actually went OK in the end. Fairly stressed, what with having lots of people here in the evening, but not too bad at all.
The meal was excellent, and is already showing the makings of becoming a regular thing – it certainly reduces everyone’s stress levels significantly when no-one has to cook a meal for thirteen, and the fun that brings on.
Because of the buffet-style food that was around in the evening along with six other people, Hound was confined to the garage for the evening – we’d put a heater in there, as well as her bed, so she was fine – which also made life a bit less stressed, and just generally everyone had a good time.
Obviously word of our “Good Life” style living has got out, as I’ve somehow ended up with things like a fat-ball holder for birds, a whole load of fat-balls (Hello, Google), a ladybird/mason-bee/butterfly house, and a number of other things that’ll go down well over time. Oh, and about £60 of garden vouchers, so that’ll keep us busy too.
All told, not a bad day at all. I’m still glad it’s over for another 365 days, though.
Jabtastic
Posted: Mon 3 December, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic Leave a comment »Today I’m working from home – and the first task of the day is getting Hound and Psycho Cat to the vets for their annual jabs. So that’ll be fun.
Still, at least it’ll mean that the job’s out the way. We’ve already had to put it off twice, so it’s now something we don’t have to remember again ’til next year. Yay.
Bird ‘Flu
Posted: Mon 19 November, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic 1 Comment »In a fit of fantastic timing, within a fortnight of us buying The Girls, a farm was found to hae the H5N1 strain of bird ‘flu. Luckily it was about 20 miles away, so we fall well outside the 10km ‘surveillance zone’ that was put in place – and so also was the place that we’d bought The Girls from, which also made life a lot easier.
As it is, they’re settling in well in their new home. I still need to put up a bit of shelter over their food and water trays – we could leave them inside the coop, but for the moment haven’t done so. I’ll probably sort out some cover/shelter for them on Wednesday when I’m working from home.
Of course, if we’d been in this surveillance zone, the birds would have been supposed to be kept inside their coop (or outside so long as it was covered, and wild birds couldn’t get any access) along with their food and water, which isn’t a situation I’d be overly happy about. The coop we bought is actually suitable (apparently) for up to four birds, so it’s big enough, but still not something I’d have been happy about. As it is, we bought the chickens because we want them to trot about, even if “only” within the limits of their run, and had/have no desire to keep them confined further. Fortunately, we haven’t had to do this, but if we had I would’ve put up some tarpaulin (something we seem to have loads of) as cover, and still let them get on with their daily business.
We still haven’t decided whether to put ourselves on the DEFRA register of poultry owners – we don’t need to, as we’re nowhere near being commercial bird owners/dealers, nor do we have more than 50 birds (Bloody hell fifty birds in our place? That’d be a nightmare) but we could sign up voluntarily. It would mean that we get rapid and up-to-date information aout bird flu, but at the same time it means that DEFRA would know where to come in order to go through with a cull…
Still we’ll see. For the moment I think we’ll be sticking with how we’re currently doing it, as it all seems to be running smoothly so far. We moved the coop over the weekend as they’d covered their area of run during the two weeks we’ve had them – and there’s a lot more garden and veg patch for them to cover before we have to go back to the place they’ve already dealt with so I think they’ll be good for a fair while yet.