Would the chicks survive our absence from the house for nigh on a week ? This was
the worrying question as the
car was packed , ready to drive off . The Barking Owl , intent on eating the fluffy
chicks , had already been
frightened off one night when I rushed out in my dressing gown
, brandishing a broom . On that
occasion, the killer took one look at me and
fled. A sudden brainstorm just before
driving off...make an instant scarecrow to try and keep the
Barking Owl at bay . Grab the pre-loved
wet suit
on a hanger in the laundry , a chair , a lump of wood which looks like
a shrunken head –bought at a garage sale-and a grass rake .With these props , place the chair on the veranda tressle
table, hook the wet suit on the back of
the seat and place the head on the seat. Problem: horrifying head hard to see
over back of the chair. Grab three
books from a box –Guns,Germs and Steel ( a short history
of everybody for the last 13,000 years),
Quotations from our Times and 2715 One –Line Quotations for Speakers, Writers and Raconteurs and stick under head . Elevated , the head looks evil and should (hopefully) scare the Barking Owl , also known as the Murder
Bird . An arm of the wet suit wrapped about the grass
rake and the instant scarecrow looks
like a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover.
As I
drive away, I hope there is no sudden tropical storm and the scarecrow falls over and annihilates
the Curlew family.
Arriving back from our trip, my wife
leaps out the car, hurdles the Berlin Wall
constructed to keep the chicks inside ,
and delivers the welcome news : They are
alive. There they are... much bigger , lollopping-hopping-sprinting-tumbling-fluffy
headed wonders . The entire family marches into the kitchen and says welcome home –we want a feed
. As I
sit here this morning hunched over the computer before dawn , there
is a tapping at the door. It is “Daddy” wanting
tucker, the rest of the family
nearby. Sit on the floor in a non-yoga - like pose and
have a strange conversation through the screen door, sometimes in a childish voice , a few imitation bird calls thrown in. Must not let my Irish doctor know about this odd behaviour when I next see him to renew my yippy bean supply .
