Last week I advertised on our HelpX host page for a helpXer for the last week of January. We need someone to feed out on the last Friday and Saturday of January when we go down to Auckland for Troy’s wedding.
An English couple applied but then changed their mind a few days later. The only other person to apply was a young Korean girl. She sounded good but she wanted to arrive on the 16th. We said no as we didn’t have any work for her to do. We asked if she could come a week later and she said she really needed to arrive on the 16th as she was leaving the Kaiwaka property she was HelpXing on. Our farm was exactly what she was looking for as a place to work on.
And so she arrived and she was all smiles and friendliness. We sat and talked for a couple of hours about this and that and she asked if we had many animals. We explained what we had and then she asked, almost hesitantly, if we ate any of them? An odd question since we mention that on our host page.
We confirmed that we did and then she says “Ohhhh. Cos I’m a vegetarian. I won’t eat any type of meat or fish.”
I don’t why, but I was a little shocked she hadn’t bothered to mention this. Especially as we clearly state on our host page that HelpXers must inform us if they are on special diets.
Her spoken English seemed pretty good so I began to wonder if she hadn’t actually read our host page at all.
She explained that she is quite against the idea of animals being harmed. Not that she was offensive or rude in anyway but I just sighed as I thought of all those special meals I’d now have to make.
After we had had a talk we went for a walk with the dogs, to show Kuri the property.
Only 5 minutes into the walk Coppa raced off into the undergrowth and seconds later appeared with a freshly killed bunny in his mouth.
“Good boy!” we said as he paraded it in front of us, the dead bunny’s legs and head bouncing up and down as he turned and trotted down the drive in front of us.
“Ohhh! Oh no! Oh no. Oh the bunny. Oh no!”
“It’s alright. It’s alright. It’s dead. He did a good thing”
Kuri was suitably horrified.
We started to explain how rabbits are a pest when suddenly another bunny raced out from the undergrowth literally into Whisky’s waiting mouth. A couple of quick bites and that dead bunny was also bouncing up and down, all floppy legs and head as Whisky raced down the drive.
“Good boy Whisky!”
There were more horrified exclamations from Kuri.
Then, as we walked down the drive and around the corner there was Coppa ripping the legs of his bunny.
“Don’t look! Don’t look!” we said
We walked over to the paddock with the cows and filled their water trough. We changed the subject and then turned around to walk back out the paddock. I had to stifle a giggle. Whisky was sitting in the middle of the path literally tearing the head off his bunny.
All the way back to the house the dogs ran in front of us with their half eaten bunnies in their mouths.
Kuri’s introduction to our lifestyle was interesting to say the least!
2 days later, as Kuri and I took the dogs for a walk over to the cows Kuri asked me the oddest question
“Do you also raise cats?” She’d been with us 2 days and we’d shown her all over the farm. Where the heck did she think we would be raising cats?
“No. We trap cats and we kill them! Don’t get me wrong, I like cats but if they come onto our property we kill them!”
“Ohhh” Kuri went very quiet.
I can only be grateful she wasn’t out with me Tuesday morning when Whisky caught a possum.
Whisky chased it up into the bush and I could hear the possum hissing and growling and Whisky growling. This went on for several minutes and I could hear Whisky having a go at it.
“Kill it Whisky! Kill it!” I’m whispering as loud as I can, trying not to wake neighbour Kevin up and then Whisky starts howling in pain. Oh my god, my baby’s being hurt! So I go racing up into the bush with just my headlamp on, getting smacked in the face by tree branches, searching desperately for Whisky. Somehow he manages to get the upperhand and drags the possum out onto the driveway. It was putting up one hell of a fight and Whisky couldn’t kill it so I had to pick it up and smash its head into a tree. Six times for Christ’s sakes! I’m half way up Gary’s drive at 4 in the morning with a badly injured possum and I’ve got stuff all options. It was quite awful. I can’t stand it when animals suffer but the damn thing wouldn’t give up.
Whisky got a good breakfast out of it but it wasn’t a nice end for the possum.
So anyway, Kuri’s a lovely girl. She’s giving the house a really good spring clean and she’s very polite, helpful, etc.
It did take me a couple of days to discover that she doesn’t really understand spoken English very well, not with a Kiwi accent anyway. We’ve had a few hiccups. I’ve explained various tasks and then she’s gone off and done something really random and I’ll be standing there watching her thinking “What the?!?”
As with most of our non-English guests we have asked her to make a traditional Korean meal. She’s been very keen but then she gave me a shopping list and I said I could only get about 2 of the 10 ingredients.
“You need to try find them” she says
“Not in Whangarei I can’t”
“You need to try”
“I can get ingredients that are similar but I can’t get those”
“You need to try. I found them in Asian supermarket in Auckland. If you try you will find them”
“No I won’t”
And so the conversation goes back and forth as I try to explain (nicely) that Whangarei isn’t quite the China town Auckland is. Thank god (No, I didn’t say that.)
So I went shopping and bought similar ingredients.
“Oh no, these are not right ones.”
And so we have the conversation again.
“You’re going to have to adapt your recipe and make a New Zealand version” I said
So tonight I will go home and will have (presumably) the Kiwi version of a Korean dish.
It Must Have Been The Cleaner
For the last week or so I have been reacting to something. Shampoo? Conditioner? Mousse? Curling spray? God knows. It randomly happens; I develop a reaction to one of the hair products I’m using and suddenly my head itches like crazy. Usually a quick change of products does it and the itching stops and the inflamed scalp calms down and life returns to normal.
But not this time, if anything the itching got worse. And you know what it’s like when you start itching badly in one place, suddenly the hair’s start prickling all over the body and one’s imagination starts to fire off itching signals here, there and everywhere.
And so I’m scratching like crazy start to wonder, should I be taking anti-histamines? Is the house flea infested from that now deceased kitten the dog’s found? I’m thinking, thinking, scratching, thinking, and then an awful thought occurs to me.
Surely not. How?! It couldn’t be! And then I start calculating dates and thinking about all the visitors we had over the Christmas period and I suddenly realise that I’ve become a host to more than just visitors.
I know, I know, it’s no big deal and there’s far worse things that could happen to me. But seriously!?!
So now I’m just adding it to me I ever increasing list of why I don’t want children.
Not that I have proof, and it’s a classic case of blame the cleaner, but you know, where there are children…
And so it was that I sat on my bedroom floor last night with a potent brew of alcohol and tea tree oil aimed at my head and a husband trying desperately to extricate himself from being involved in the process.
“I don’t know what I’m doing” he says exasperatedly
“Well I can’t see my own head can I? Just point and shoot the bloody stuff!”
“Uhhh. It smells awful!”
“Well open the window then!”
“It’s no use. I can’t do it. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do”
Why is it that men are all eager and skilled when it comes to manly stuff but as soon as it’s gross, domestic stuff they’re completely incompetent, their coordination, ability to see and need to do a job well disappears out the window? It would seem that men are as skilled at using a lice comb as they are at using a toilet brush.
And so Aaron retired for the night while I sat by the open window ripping out great chunks of hair with a comb designed for the fine hair of young children, not the coarse, colour-treated hair of a woman of rapidly advancing years.
The alcohol dried my hair out terribly and the tea tree oil is clearly an aromatherapy stimulant so I spent almost the entire night lying in bed feeling exhaustingly tired yet completely wired, itching like crazy and pissed off like you wouldn’t believe!
Death Waits Patiently At The Back Door
We feed it, put a water container next to it and somehow it lives. We are watching for signs that mentally it has had enough but it hasn’t happened yet. It managed to drag/roll itself into the chicken house, and then perhaps because of the sunny days it got itself down to the back of the house and there it sits, alone and helpless.
What do we do?
Aaron yelled at the chicken in frustration. I in turn yelled at Aaron and copped a telling off myself.
“It’s not you who will have to end its life is it?!”
I would if I had too, but no I don’t want to, I struggle with it. The guilt causes a clumsy physical reaction in me, a slowing down, a physical weakness that leads to animals suffering.
Once again we are faced with the question - when do we decide an animal should die? When does it stop being about our discomfort over what we are seeing and start being about doing the humane thing? There’s a line that is crossed somewhere along the process but it’s so hard to detect.
This is not commercial farming. This is not a profit and loss scenario. This is life and an animal’s right to live.
And so it is when death calls at the farm that once again he has also brought life to fill the void.
We have a new lamb on the block. Thyme has yet again produced a mid year lamb. The sheep are across the stream and spending their days under the tress, shielded from the sun. I’ve caught a fleeting glimpse of it just once as Thyme whisked it off to safety. It’s is clearly healthy and robust.
But death waits to take the chicken as payment.
He will have to wait a little bit longer. I am not ready yet. If it recovered once perhaps it can do it again.
No comments:
Post a Comment