Junior Miss has been hanging out with us most days. My True Love takes her photo every day. She doesn’t mind. She was a quite a bit smaller when she first started sleeping over. Occasionally she is evicted by big mum and baby possume but we haven’t seen them for a while.
Junior Miss today.
This spot is quite close to the tin roof. It is 35c degrees today so she got quite warm.
So she found another spot closer to the ground.
Whatever works!
Here is a photo from a few days ago. She likes the oil drip tray so my True Love cleaned it up for her.
All is well. We are all tucked up inside in air-conditioned comfort, except for Junior Miss. It will be another hot day for her tomorrow. Hopefully she will cope.
I thought now would be a good time to repeat this post about my little dog, Ama, for she is now 12 and has been quite unwell again. She recently spent a week in the vet hospital with severe pancreatitis and left with a diagnosis of insulinoma, an aggressive cancer. She’s been home for two weeks now and is still quite bright. Not at all like a dog on her last legs. “Perhaps the diagnosis is wrong?” I entreated the vet on our last visit. He didn’t think so based on a relevant blood test. I still hold out hope. That’s quite strange for me because I am usually such a catastrophiser. In the meantime, we continue to enjoy her company and deprive her of cheese. Life is so unfair.
*****
This post is dedicated to my little dog, Ama, who is not well. So far we know that she has copper storage disease but not how bad it is or whether we can mitigate it. I’ve not had much time for blogging lately as we’ve had a lot of medical appointments and I’ve been researching treatments, including low copper diets. It helps to be informed when talking to veterinary specialists. It also gives me something to do while I worry.
Ama’s birthday is this Saturday. She’ll be six. When I was looking for a pet name for her, I read that Ama meant born on a Saturday (in Ghanaian). As she was born on a Saturday, and the name had a nice ring to it, we just went with that (plus we like to say Um-ah when she is naughty). She also has a pedigree name – Eurabbie Taehti. Taehti means Polar Star in Finnish. Everything does seem to revolve around the little minx so it is fitting, but more importantly, she lights the way.
Earlier in the year, our little Finnish Spitz, Ama, suffered an unpleasant medical episode, or at least we thought she had. One night she wouldn’t settle. She paced and whined, panted and barked constantly. For hours. I thought she was having a heart attack so my True Love rushed her to the overnight emergency vet.
The vet said she was in pain, maybe a back injury, so they gave her some strong pain medication and told us to keep her quiet. It didn’t work. She continued to pace, whine and bark. All night in fact. She also wanted to go outside every five minutes and cried at the back door. We were exhausted. What were we to do? At 6am, we took her to the other emergency vet for the blood tests we had declined the previous evening. The blood tests revealed very little. It was a mystery. The vet gave her a sedative so that we, I mean, she, could get some rest. We slept all day and Ama seemed to improve. As evening approached, she started to get agitated again.
A couple of months later, she saw her regular specialist – special girl that our cherub is. We discussed the possibility of dementia but he could see no evidence of cognitive decline. The verdict? She’s getting old and demanding.
Weeks later it came to pass that the same thing happened again. But this time, the cause of this agitation became abundantly clear.
A possum eating our climbing rose! Ama is now banned from going out at dusk and early evening until we check that the coast is clear. Typical Finnish Spitz. The force (hunting instinct) is strong in them. So is the cheese instinct, but that’s another story.
Ama turned 12 years old in December. She still shines brightly.
Here’s to Ama.
Take care, everyone. May your evenings be free of rose-eating possums.
G’day, Readers. I hope you are all well and keeping busy. It seems I have lost the ability and will to blog at 3am. These days, 5pm seems to be my bedtime. It is all a bit strange really. I’m sure I have mentioned this before but it has been a long time between blog posts and I am sure you would have forgotten.
I’ve been watching a doctor show on the tele. The head doc is rude and his offsiders are pretty FITH. But they know their stuff. Amyloidosis, anyone? Since I am a real hypochondriac, it passes the time pleasantly. When I take my long list of ailments to my doctor, I get sent home with a fact sheet on menopause. What a cheek! Despite this, I am happy. A sure sign that I have really lost it.
However, continuing with all things positive, I thought I would overshare my dogs first bath in about three years. I bitch about my phone camera, but it sure does take nice dog photos. Makea had her bath last week when I was sleeping, so it was just Fynnie and Ama that faced today’s particular torture.
Actually, Ama was a little champion. She always is.
Plus, a well placed distraction.
Say cheese.
Excuse me!
Hope your day brings you a little slice of happiness.
Regular readers will know that I have both a fascination for, and dislike of, rats that are not native to Australia. If you told me that the photo below was of a native bush rat, I would say, “Oh, poor thing!” However, if you told me that it was Rattus rattus, I would have no sympathy for it. I would have some sympathy for the magpie though, my first thought being that I hoped the rat wasn’t poisoned lest the magpie die of secondary poisoning.
Anyway, I have been hanging on to this photo for a while, since April actually. I was out walking, contemplating fording some long weedy grass – a wilderness experience – when I caught this magpie acting strangely on the edge of the sports oval. All of a sudden it darted into the long grass (magpies much prefer short grass) and pulled out a rat.
So the long tail tells me that it was Rattus rattus. Do you agree? I suspect it was a dead rat because it didn’t put up a fight and the magpie spent a good minute wondering what to do with it before she flew away with it. It is likely that the rat was poisoned. Or old. Anyway, anyway, there was nothing much I could do about the situation. After that, I decided not to head into the long grass.
You know how I love a good story. I cropped the photo for Show & Tell at my photography group. I think the members quite liked this photo and the story.
This may or may not be my final word on matters rattus. It depends …. Speaking of photography, I submitted some photos for a bookmark that my photography group is producing. I’ve never done anything like that before but why am I in this group if I am not going to participate in the activities? I am keen to know the outcome because I really liked the photos and I would love to share them with you.
Apart from that, my life is pretty ordinary. Given the events elsewhere, this is a good thing.
You may be excused for thinking this is Bushboy’s blog, readers. It isn’t! I suppose one of the consolations of having so many rats this year, is that we have had so many more little birds visiting us as well. Anyway, my True Love spent the three weeks of his holiday plugging tiny gaps to prevent the rats getting into the house, thus trapping most of the rats in our roof and wall cavities. We can hear them thundering across the ceiling, perhaps in some rat version of Lord Of The Flies. So maybe the little birds are more comfy to stick around for longer. Anyway, anyway, I digress. There were at least 30 little birds in my yard this morning. This is really extraordinary for our place. They usually never stop to bath in the bird bath but now … they’re into it.
However, one of these birds is not like the others. Equal opportunity here, readers. Well, apart from the rats.
Fortunately, I can now share the joy with you as my youngest son has repaired our internet cable. Our dog, Fynn, chewed through the data cable because he was convinced if he could just rip out the cable, he could start on the wall next, and thus have the starving rodents leap out of the wall cavity into his waiting jaws. Life’s never boring with a Finnish Spitz! But it is not just our house, readers. My vet told me that his cat keeps bringing live rats into the house through the cat door. I am so glad I don’t have a cat.
When my family got involved in the regeneration of our local woodland, I never imagined that one of our tasks would be to photograph the insects in that space. My True Love (TL) needed little encouragement as he already had an interest in insects. Suffice to say, he has found it extraordinarily difficult to get these small creatures in focus. The wind seems to blow constantly and the insects make haste to avoid being eaten or to eat others. Kudos to all the insect photographers out there. I’m not one of them. You have to take lots of photos to get one or two in focus, at least my TL does on his particular camera. Anyway, today I am featuring a few of the photos my TL has taken over the last six months. Let’s get started.
Bug eyes.
Purple-winged mantid – Tenodera australasiae
What do you think? Spider egg sacs?
Two-tailed spider egg sac?
Beetles seem to be the favourite prey of many insects, although to be strictly accurate, spiders are not insects.
Apparently the Cerceris, or digger, wasp likes beetles too. My TL is lucky enough just to get the photo of the wasp, so no beetles were eaten in this photo. Cute, don’t you think?
Cerceris wasp – Cerceris sp. (genus)
My TL also took some photos of cuckoos. How about this tiny cuckoo wasp? It is only about 4-5mm long and super fast.
Cuckoo Wasp – Primeuchroeus sp. (genus)
And a Chequered cuckoo bee. Seriously, there is such a thing.
Chequered Cuckoo Bee – Thyreus caeruleopunctatus
Halictad bees are also tiny. At least, these ones are. The first one has just emerged from a tiny Wahlenbergia, our native bluebell, and the second is roosting in some grass.
My TL tried to take some photos of meat ants launching their queens. But it was a bit hard to get them in focus. I was hollering in the background because the ants were biting me as they were scrambling up my jeans. Definitely had ants in me pants. We had to move away quickly. I thought I would have to drop my dacks on the track to get them out. Just imagine if other walkers had came across a man doing the same thing? He probably would have got into some serious trouble for being a flasher. Anyway, back to the photos – a meat ant pushing a lump of dirt downhill.
Meat Ant – Iridomyrmex purpureus
Speaking of beetles being eaten alive …. We know ants gotta eat, but my TL nevertheless rescued this beetle. The ants would not let that poor beetle go. My TL had a devil of a job freeing it. You have got to be joking if you think I am going anywhere near those ants.
Well, I can’t leave you traumatised so I will finish off with this lovely photo of a Yellow Admiral butterfly on a scribbly gum.
Yellow Admiral Butterfly – Vanessa itea
Thank you to Donna from Wind Kisses for coming up with this theme. It is probably the only subject that I can talk a lot about but don’t have to do any of the work to bring the images to you.
Now bugger off (Aussie slang for “Off you go.” No offense intended.)
Okay, a few words. Our cameras and the software can do magic these day to sharpen and lighten up soft photos taken in the gloom. I constantly debate with myself about using all this tech to massage the photo into what I’ve been told is the correct exposure. I confess that I did touch up this photo. Just a bit. There is no point in posting something that people can’t see, I chide myself. But I like dark photos where shapes and colours merge together.
Reflections of An Untidy Mind 