Attack in the dark.

So...just as we were going to bed we heard a commotion next door from our neighbour's chooks. We texted them but got no reply and when we heard further commotion we went to investigate. The chook pen door was open, there was one hen on a perch, a dead rooster on the floor and another dying hen lying next to it. There was another hen alive but laying low in the outside pen. We rang the neighbours who were in bed and told them the news, shut the door and came home leaving them to sort it.On the way back to bed we went and checked our own chooks. Scarily the rock and log that hold down the netting at the door had been scraped away. I remember closing it firmly at sunset. Luckily all our birds were safe. We think the fox might have got in but was distracted by the food scraps we had thrown in the pen.We have placed a heavier rock at the door to hold the netting down.

Light show.

So....after weeks and weeks of dry weather last night, at about 11.30, we watched a storm approaching us in Blue Moon House. The lightning was constant and we heard the thunder approaching for at least 45 minutes until it was over us. Before it arrived we decided to head back down into Frogknot to sit it out because the lightning seemed to suggest that it was a particularly  intense storm when in actual fact it turned out to be pretty much a damp squib. It was over and gone in about 15 minutes with a short 3 minute burst of heavy rain and then just the drip, drip, drop of April showers.We went back to Blue Moon and to sleep.At 1.55 am we were woken by another aproaching storm. The lightning was less frequent than the previous storm.It never ceases to amaze me how fast these storms approach. I doubt you could outrun one in a car.This second storm had much more substance and we got a fair bit of rain with it. One bolt of lightning seemed to hit very close by as the crack of thunder was almost immediate and shook our little house. It was all over in about 45 minutes but in all we had 13 mls of rain.Everything has been so dry, the grass was crunching underfoot and the leaves on the trees were all shriveled. It was a welcome relief.One thing not so welcome is the effect the rain appears to have had upon one very noisy cricket that started to chirrup after the first shower. It continued most of the night and is still at it tonight. I think I prefer the monotony of the distant yapping thing to this cricket's rhythmic trilling.It's like someone's unanswered mobile phone going on for hours and hours and hours......

A handful of possums!

So...tonight I counted five Brush Tailed Possums around Frogknot on the way to bed and none of them appeared to be one eyed Caliban......pictured here in the tree outside Blue Moon House the other night. So he would make six local possums and that is not including the Ring Tailed Possum that has a nest in the shed.Where are they all sleeping during the day?

The utter idiot.

So...I awoke with a start this morning and looked at the time to find to my horror that it was 8.34 am. I uttered a rude word and leapt out of bed in a total panic and dashed across the garden from Blue Moon to Frogknot in the all together.My Saturday shift starts at 9.00 and I normally leave the house at twenty five past to get there in time. I threw on my uniform, remembered to take my blood pressure pill which I washed down with some left over vimto and possible mouse urine and dashed out to the car. I needed a shave but I didn't have the time.Poor Roxy has never been so badly manhandled down our bumpy drive but I was late and I needed to get to work. I raced down Mt Sterling Road hoping there were no kangaroos on the roadside ahead who just couldn't face life anymore. I got to the highway without even stopping at the railway crossing or the highway junction and bombed along the road to Stanthorpe. I imagined Josie, my Saturday colleague, looking at the clock and wondering where I was as opening time drew closer.Just outside Stanthorpe there are some roadworks and I had to stop in a queue at the traffic lights. It gave me time to tuck my shirt in and do up my fly and text Josie,"I'm coming. Nearly there!"For the last bit through the traffic lights and into Stanthorpe I was stuck behind the slowest driver in the World. Why do they always get in front of you when you are in a hurry? They were going the exact same way as me too. What were the chances of that?Finally I got to the Library, parked the car and ran in via the back door. I could hear talking in the Library and thought 'Oh no! Josie has had to open before I got there.'I dashed through the door into the Library and there were Cheryl and Maxine behind the counter."Hello Nick." They said with a look of surprise.I went up to the counter and rested my head upon it and caught my breath. It had all became clear."I don't think you are rostered today," said Maxine."No," I said, "I thought it was Saturday." It was Friday the 13th!Oh, how we laughed.I left them chuckling and went back to the car where I answered Josie's text of,"but I'm not working today," which I had not seen in my hurry, then drove back home at a more sedate pace, feeling an utter idiot.

The mouse that exploded!

So...for the last few days our neighbours have been away visiting family and as well as keeping an eye on their 'chooks' they asked me if I would check a mouse trap that they had set in their office. it seems that a mouse had moved in and was making a nest in a small hole in the wall under a desk. They had left the house unlocked, as most people around here seem to do when they go away, so I was able to get in but it felt very strange wandering into their house every morning.The trap they had set was a humane one but for two days it had been sprung and yet it was empty. I kept receiving texts asking about the mouse catching progress but could only reply with bad news. Last night I decided to set a lethal trap as well as we have been having success with them recently here at Frogknot, but this morning, the last before they returned, I found both traps empty again.I brought the lethal trap home and set it with the others here and before lunchtime had caught three mice!Our neighbours returned home this evening and I messaged them to tell them about the lethal trap I had set but had had no luck with it except in catching three mice in our house today. I wished them luck with 'Supermouse.'A little later the neighbours rang. They had returned home to find the freezer not working and couldn't understand why until they discovered it was not the freezer but the socket it was plugged into. Dave suddenly suspected rodent intervention and sure enough, on squeezing his phone into the hole in the wall to take pictures, discovered the mouse had chewed through the electric cables and in shorting the circuit the mouse had exploded in the wall cavity and there was evidence of a small fire.To think that their house could have been set alight by a mouse this time does not bear thinking about. I told him I hadn't smelt anything like a burnt, exploded mouse on my visits but he said he thought it had not long happened. He couldn't get his hand in the hole but he got his son Jarrah to get his hand in (obviously with the power off) and scrape what was left of the mouse out and he said, and I quote, 'the guts were pretty fresh.'"We got the mouse in the end!"...but what an end to the tale it was.I will leave, you after that unpleasantness, with some pictures I took this morning of the view from our neighbours house. This is the view we would have if we didn't like trees as much as we do...