Wednesday 15 June 2016

quizzical quigley and some roses


OK - this year I wasn't going to do rook rescue but when I saw these two young rooks strutting around the farmyard I thought I should keep an eye open. Sure enough I found one of them later with its head bitten off - fox? dog? cross gamekeeper?


So I decided I'd don my rook rescue bonnet and save the other. This is he.


 I decided not to give it a name (Grace?) but hand feed it until it could feed itself and hope it'll fly away (Ophelia? No - not after the last one drowned - I think not a good idea.) Anyway - although I was quite sure the last one was a female I'm pretty sure this one is male. (Ted?) I'm not going to give my stereotypical reasons as to why I think that here  - but believe me there are some. Also he loves his food. (Orson?)
The Rook Helpline have again been wonderful and sent me a care package to deal with all the parasitical things that rooks get. Also a fabulous menu. Pixie and Beezle (see below) can't understand why  (a.) they don't get fed so regularly (every two hours) or  (.b). why they don't get peas, pasta, cheese, soft fruits,  cat food and mince.
 He shuffles his wings, looks at me beadily and quizzically tips his head when he sees me - probably wondering if it's peas or pasta on the menu.



 He's flying really well in the large shade tunnel that is now entirely his and jumps onto my arm when I come in, opens his cavernous bright red mouth and goes Aaarkkkk! Aaarkkkk! Whereby I obligingly tuck the afore mentioned menu down his throat. I thought I was making progress with the wholewheat spaghetti as it looked like worms but he's not interested in feeding himself. Well why would he when I'm doing it. I'll probably be doing it when he's riding around on my bath chair.(a hooded wheelchair for the infirmed incase you are under a hundred and reading this.)
As Beezle and Mark Twain would say "Part of the secret in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."

Truman Capote had a pet raven who he called Lola. Corvids like to steal and cache and she had taken a pair of false teeth from an elderly guest staying with Capote. Here he writes:

She leaped from floor to chair to bookshelf; then as though it were a cleft in a mountain leading to Ali Baba's cavern, she squeezed between two books and disappeared behind them:evaporated like Alice through the looking glass. The Complete Jane Austen concealed her cache, which, when we found it, consisted, in addition to the purloined dentures, of the long lost keys to my car .....a mass of paper money - thousands of lire torn into tiny scraps, as though intended for some future nest, old letters, my best cuff links, rubber bands, yards of string, the first page of a short story I'd stopped writing because I couldn't find the first page, an American penny, a dry rose, a crystal button ....


I am hoping this rook learns to fly before it learns to steal.

 No exciting book news from me - only rook news - but my writing day is obviously starting a little later now there's another mouth to feed. Oh I sound like some poor woman in a Dicken's novel with ten children.
So here are some fabulous roses I have in the garden. Although they look fabulous, these tightly petalled ones aren't a favourite with bees as they can't really get in.


 For long time readers of this blog you'll know that the elegant Beezle is also a philosopher and shares his thoughts on every post. Pixie says she feels left out and wants to contribute an interesting fact section.  She said if I didn't let her she'd sit on my lap. So here's her first interesting fact.

 Polar Bears are left handed.

I asked if she was going to accompany it with a photo nicked off Google but she said don't be silly, my paws are too big to work the keys on your computer.




I've decided to call the rook Quigley


                                      (all the rooks seem to like my laptop stand as a perch).


The Darkling Thrush

Related Poem Content Details

I leant upon a coppice gate 
      When Frost was spectre-grey, 
And Winter's dregs made desolate 
      The weakening eye of day. 
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky 
      Like strings of broken lyres, 
And all mankind that haunted nigh 
      Had sought their household fires. 

The land's sharp features seemed to be 
      The Century's corpse outleant, 
His crypt the cloudy canopy, 
      The wind his death-lament. 
The ancient pulse of germ and birth 
      Was shrunken hard and dry, 
And every spirit upon earth 
      Seemed fervourless as I. 

At once a voice arose among 
      The bleak twigs overhead 
In a full-hearted evensong 
      Of joy illimited; 
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, 
      In blast-beruffled plume, 
Had chosen thus to fling his soul 
      Upon the growing gloom. 

So little cause for carolings 
      Of such ecstatic sound 
Was written on terrestrial things 
      Afar or nigh around, 
That I could think there trembled through 
      His happy good-night air 
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew 
      And I was unaware. 

RIP Jane Patchett.

No comments:

Post a Comment