It was a wise move not to buy 10,000 party lights with which to drape the house for the festive season as the way things are going in the run up to Christmas a Chevy Chase lighting problem would almost certainly have ensued . Things started to go awry when one of the two latest baby Curlew chicks disappeared overnight .
The trap set up to catch feral cats which could have contributed to the now five Curlew deaths over the year caught nothing but annoying possums which each night stage noisy re-enactments of the Melbourne Cup on the roof . Our resident backyard Curlew family posed near the trap , below , the smaller of the chicks the one which vanished.
Then Cockatoos attacked fruit on the mandarin tree , so risking life and limb and against medical advice , took a bundle of bird netting from the shed, in the process making much noise just in case there was a snake holidaying there , and clambered up on a rickety ladder bought for $5 at a garage sale, and roughly wrapped the tree a la Christo under the influence of a surfeit of potent Christmas punch.
Then shrieking Cockatoos frequently dived overhead and hung in various playful positions, including upside down , on power lines and trees ,looking like balls of snow from a distance , an indication that you are going troppo as there is no snow in these parts and certainly very little rain, twitch twitch .
Then the Curlew family started regularly turning up at the kitchen door about 5.30am expecting to be fed, which it was. The mother made its presence known by hissing , the surviving chick putting in an order for a Continental breakfast, while its father , its injured leg much improved, stayed in the background.
Then, horror of horrors-it was discovered that somehow the deep freeze chest in the laundry had been turned off , and was immediately turned back on . Days later, more horror. On placing more tucker into the deep freeze, it was discovered that when it was turned off the remains of a bag of crushed ice had melted, leaked out and turned into a block of ice on the bottom, one of the hams and a packet of tarts firmly imbedded in the glacier.
Using a chisel , a hammer , screwdriver and boiling water, it took an hour to free the ham and pulverise the packet of tarts , stretching hamstrings so much that I walked like a ruptured No. 5 duck for days.
Then , lurching out of bed after 5am to feed the Curlews , discovered they had vanished, including the chick . Because there was a barrier to prevent the chicks from venturing out into the cold cruel world , it was felt , once again, something had taken the young bird .
A thorough search of front and back failed to find any sign of the birds , other Curlews down the front , yes , but not " our" ones .
Then , late in the afternoon , there they were , down the front. Attempts to lure them to the relative safety of the backyard failed. Making friendly clucking noises, and throwing food to the chick , I got close enough to make a grab for it , but missed. The parents then ran off with it across the dangerous road and another attempt to catch it with a large cloth also failed, causing it to sprint off and disappear in a dense Jurassic Park garden further up the road.
While this drama was being played out, down the road , at the residence of the Queen of the Jungle, Larry the Cussing Lorikeet was venting his anger at the fact that his Purple People Eater , in which he slumbers inside his cage , had been washed in readiness for him to pack his kitbag and spend the Christmas period at sea with his owners . Bugger! Bugger! Bugger! said he on inspecting the freshly cleaned sleeping bag .
Then , next morning , the Curlews were lured home early, by making clucking noises and tapping my cereal dish with a spoon . Watching the blighters eat, thankful that they and the chick had come home like Lassie , there suddenly appeared a CAT!!! Grabbing a sandal and roaring like a cross between a mountain lion and an Irish wolfhound , I hurled it at the intruder ,which fled over the back fence . It took some time to find the sandal as it had lodged in a clump of golden canes .
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Tail and paws of possum with do not disturb sign presents repulsive sight which could scare Santa's flighty reindeers and cause them to stampede.
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Then , that very same day , it was discovered , above , that not one but two blankety-blank possums had taken up residence in a narrow space on the back verandah, where sheets of iron meet the facia board.
Daytime attempts to get the slumbering possums , tired from all the Flemington training gallops for Gai Waterhouse during the night , failed to get them to quit the premises . To show that man is smarter than possums , before sunrise , the possums still running about on the roof like cobalt doped nags , this grumpy blogger stumbled out of bed, again mounted the rickety $5 ladder and (hopefully) blocked off the entrance to the roof cavity with several stone pavers and a chunk of heavy building material wrapped in cloth .
As the pile of masonry is above where you step out of the kitchen to go to the laundry , my wife was advised to wear a crash helmet whenever she goes to the freezer during Christmas-just in case the possums manage to gain reentry from another place and achieve egress by energetically pushing out the dangerous blockage.
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A Cool Yule and a Frantic First from Little Darwin and two of our typical readers in Ireland , with cat , who shall remain anonymous...for obvious reasons . Below : From atop the Eiffel Tower , Little Darwin regulars Peter and Judi Burleigh , send best wishes and blow bubbles for the festive season.
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