Ghastly Moments in Gardening V: Red in Beak and Claw

Yesterday, the boys came rushing in to tell me that there was a mouse in the chook food bucket.  The bucket was nearly empty and the poor mouse, not a very large one, was unable to jump out.  I roused on the boys for leaving the lid off overnight and took the bucket outside.

There we were as I tipped the bucket slowly sideways to let the mouse out: the Geek, the Twig, the Sprig and the chooks wandering near us.  The mouse finally leapt out and bolted between my husband's feet, looking for safety in the grass nearby.

But too late!  One of our chooks saw the movement and tore after it.  To my surprise, she was able to snatch the mouse up in her beak -- it shrieked! -- and then all the chooks were after her.  The poor mouse was dropped and snatched up several times before one of the girls triumphantly carried off the now-lifeless body to a corner of the back yard.

I had no idea chickens would attack an animal as big as a mouse!

Ghastly Moments in Gardening IV: Nine-Fingered Chookie and the Secateurs of Doom

You can guess how this story ends, so I'll show you the result now.


I was having a lovely time on Sunday afternoon with my secateurs when I made a slight misjudgement. The cutting blade sliced through the pad of my left ring-finger. I think the top end of the blade only just caught my finger, so the anvil (the thick lower jaw) was not involved. But the secateurs are Swiss-made and, I discovered, still razor-sharp after some years of use and abuse.

It was a deep cut, though, with lots of blood. I zoomed into the laundry to wash it off a bit. It was only after I moved my hand and the water bent the flap back that the world started to go dark. I've occasionally felt faint, but have never been so close to collapsing on the floor before! After the Geek had helped me wrap it up, I'd rested for a while on the bench outside until I felt better.

By now I knew that I needed at least a tetanus jab, if not stitches, and on a Sunday afternoon that would mean going to our local hospital. So I had a cup of tea, made by the Geek (one should never go to hospital unfortified). I think his first-aid skills might need a bit of work but the tea was well made! By 3:30 I was in Casualty.

The triage nurse replaced the hasty dressing with a proper constriction bandage to reduce blood flow, and then I had to wait for the doctor. My only entertainment was two coppers arriving with a fellow in handcuffs who had no shoes and no teeth, and who appeared to be slightly on the wrong side of the sanity line. And there was a B-grade meerkat documentary on the TV.

I think I saw the doctor at about 5pm, which isn't bad for a small hospital on a Sunday afternoon. I ended up with four stitches, as you can see, a tetanus jab and a Keflex prescription. And local anaesthetic injections into the finger are just as painful there as they are anywhere else. I was grateful my wedding rings escaped being cut off.

Meanwhile, the Geek had been cooking a lamb roast. Delicious, though the anaesthetic had worn off and my finger was pretty sore. Most annoying things: I missed out on all the other garden work I was planning to do, and as I type properly, having my ring finger out of action is a nuisance. But it looks like it's healing well. The stitches will be removed on Friday.

Ghastly Moments in Gardening II and III

Alas, I have had two Ghastly Moments in the past week. Someone tell me that I'm not the only one that has them!

Ghastly Moment II

Penny the chook knows that food comes from our house. She is also quite happy to walk in and ask for it. And our back door flies open easily.

The rest of us were in various part of the house, and the first we heard was the sound of a chicken fluttering. When we came into the kitchen, there was Penny at the table, as if she'd come for dinner! So of course I caught her to take her out. Now the usual way you hold a chook is around the body, holding the wings so they don't flap. I thought I had a good grip on her as I swung past the table to take her out, but then I thought I saw something moving on her feathers. I turned her sideways to get a better look and she got a wing free.

Flap--snap. Her wing hit my arm at an odd angle, and the top bone shattered. I feel sick just remembering the noise.

On the bright side, she's holding it fairly normally, and the vet thinks that she will be OK although she probably won't be able to fly properly. That isn't a huge problem for a back yard chook; flying means "goes over fences and meets a dog" in suburbia.

Ghastly Moment III

It was a large family, but a happy one. The children looked clean and well-fed, though the parents were absent when we looked into their house. The house was much tidier than mine: not a speck of dirt to be seen. Those sweet little children played with each other happily as we watched. And I realised I had to kill them.

I thought drowning was the kindest method as it's quick. They were climbing over each other's plump little bodies one minute, and next they were trying vainly to climb out of the water --- a horrid symmetry. It took five minutes at most. I still feel guilty, ending the lives of a dozen sweet babies. But what else can you do when you find a rat's nest?

Ghastly Moments in Gardening

Gardeners are a bit closer to nature than most, and are generally less squeamish as a consequence. While digging you inevitably cut worms in half, meet spiders and centipedes, and try to avoid toxoplasmosis, tetanus and Legionnaires' Disease. You deal with poo, with live animals, dead animals. My ghastly moment yesterday involved a half-dead animal in the vegie patch.

Earlier in the day I had laid down newspaper and spoilt hay to renew a garden path there. In the evening, I was nearby planting out lettuces, chillies and basil before it rained, and talking to The Geek. I turned around to pick up some of the hay to use for mulch, and there in the middle of the path was a small rat. Writhing. At first I thought it had been poisoned elsewhere and staggered out to die, but then I realised that I had probably stepped on the poor thing on my way, and broken its back.

"Should we call The Twig over to have a look?" The Geek suggested. I eyed the poor twisting thing and firmly told him No. (What on earth was he thinking?)

It kept writhing. It dawned on me that I'd have to put it out of its misery, or it might be there for a while.

A swift blow with my trowel and the job was done. Now what?

Well, I am a gardener, and I'm not squeamish. I've buried it in the middle of the vegie patch for its nutrients.