Sunday, July 18, 2010

I Love Egg

A friend of mine sent me a link to a silly cartoon video for a song called I Love Egg, which discusses the virtues of egg eating. Here's a link if you want to see it: I Love Egg video on YouTube. He specifically requested that I play it to our chickens and capture their reaction, so I did.

I lined up the song and took my laptop out to the deck. The chickens were all milling about, and of course they were interested in what I was doing, so I thought they would crowd around the laptop and perhaps peck at the keys. I couldn't have been more wrong.

As soon as I hit 'Play', two of the chickens scarpered. Sean Henn was the only one brave enough to take a closer look. As soon as the music got going, she recoiled with a look of shock visible on her beak. Now, if you've ever spent time around chickens you'll know that they always look shocked. Things like daybreak, egg-laying time, feeding time, and dusk take them by surprise every day. But this... this was shock in its most genuine form.


Within a fraction of a second Sean Henn was legging it away from the laptop and the song.


She regrouped with Beulah and Cluck Norris, and the three of them turned their feathery backs on me. The song played forlornly to itself as the chickens retreated to the safety of the water tank.

I think it's safe to say that I Love Egg is not on their Top Ten.

Sunday, July 04, 2010

A few photos for you

Here are some random pictures for you to look at.

It was feijoa season not too long ago. I'd never heard of feijoas before moving to New Zealand -- apparently they don't travel well, which is why they weren't on offer in Ireland. They are soft on the inside, eaten with a spoon, and taste like medicine. Germolene or something. I don't like them much...


We had a "Christmas dinner" at the end of June. Christmas in summertime just doesn't feel right to me, so we moved it to winter instead. Much better. There was a tree with tinsel and fairy lights, Christmas music, friends, gifts, and of course brussels sprouts.


This is a terrible photo of just about everybody (and doesn't even include two of us), so I probably shouldn't put it up, but it's the only group photo I've got. Sorry, folks!


The chickens dined well on leftovers the next day. They enjoyed the dinner, and ate most of the dessert but left all the strawberries that were in the trifle. They ate every scrap of cream and custard and jelly, but the strawberries remained whole and untouched. Weird little birds.

The weather has been very mixed recently. We had an unbelieveably wet June, but it seems to have perked up a bit recently. Yesterday was almost like summertime, and I enjoyed a walk past the Heathcote river.

This morning we woke up to thick frost. The chickens don't quite know what frost is, and kept pecking it.

Oh, and here's a beautiful gramophone that I found in a shop yesterday. If I had space for it (and the requisite $950) it would have followed me home. I did buy some gloves, but that's not quite the same, is it?