Hectic, hot week past.

Last week was hectic - hot and hectic. I have an allergy to clegg bites and I managed to get a few. My leg and hand swelled up during shearing. I wasn't shearing - thankfully. The wonderful Robert came with his electrickery ones and it was all done and dusted in a couple of hours and beers.
It's great for the sheeps to get their jackets off during this heat. You always worry about fly strike, and dread finding maggots - which I never have - yet, at least not in the sheeps......

Last Monday the borage brew was ready - it's an organic feed that I water onto the veggies. It does stink like a corpse, but it's grand stuff & free - I like free things. I chop the plants off near their base, stuff them in a mesh sack, place it weighted down in a water-filled dustbin, then leave it for three weeks to fester. You dilute it 1:25 and use it like tomato feed. I put the slimy leaves out of the sack onto the tattie patch. The tattie patch is near where Mrs Hopperty was sitting on eggs under the scrubby tree. I feed the ophans their bottles just over the fence from there.
Tuesday morning was hot again. Harriet and Gem were waiting at the fence for their bottles.

( Don't read on if you are at all squeamish. Cruel scenes of nature content warning.)

I could smell a nasty smell - that unmistakable sweet scent of something putrid. Harriet distracted me by leaping onto her bottle with such force her teeth caught my finger and dragged off a bit of flesh. It's remarkable how sharp their little teeth are.
I peeped in at Mrs Hopperty on the way back. She seemed fine, but there was quite a few bluebottles and greenbottles buzzing around.
When I told Jim, he blamed the borage leaves on the tattie patch, said they honked to high heaven.
I could hear the peeping of a chick. Kept checking and still heard just the one peeping. All day I checked and started to feel something was not right as the hot day wore on.
A shell appeared later on and then she moved off the nest with just two tiny chicks leaving a couple of half dead chicks that appeared swollen at the back-end. Fly strike. We, by that I mean Jim, had to dispatch them. The nest was filled with another couple of dead chicks and unhatched, unviable eggs. This is so spooky, as a few weeks back I wrote a flash fiction for the weekly challenge on writewords (which I won - brag,brag!) and had put Mrs Hopperty in it & had 'Mother' cleaning up dead chicks & putrid unviable eggs after the hatch. I'd best be careful what I write in future, don't want to tempt the fates. Make mental note to self to delete stories where I have written about a prostitute in the first person - which I haven't been and am probably too old & ugly to now - although there's probably a market for that too. There seems to be for most things if the price is right.

We have friends in a neighbouring township who rescue animals, birds - insects. You name it, it's crawled over their kitchen surfaces, slithered under their settee. They had a spate of hedgehogs - if that's the collective name, probably should be a prickle - in early Spring. They had one who had a spine rot thing. It lifted up it's front end and spat all the time - sort of hissed, then it sicked up and rubbed it into its spines. Bit how I imagine a cross between a punk and Hell's Angel would do as a party piece. But apparently it's normal in hedgehogs. That penultimate bit was prejudiced - apologies to anyone who I may have offended.
Anyhoo - Rescuer friends had a solitary chick hatch from an entire incubator filled with eggs. Poor wee thing had no peers. A neighbour had given them a few weeks old chick with a broken leg as company for it, but that needed dispatching as it wasn't in a good way. It wasn't healing & it was swinging it's other leg out of kilter and using its wing tips as steadying props and, and....well it was all a bit tragic. So I suggest they bring it over & pop it in with Mrs Hopperty and her two wee ones.
We tried it, and Mrs Hopperty was brilliant, putting food down to it, trying to foster it, but the orpan just cheeped constantly in a high-pitched distressed way.
It eventually went in the newly constructed house and settled down. Mrs Hopperty and her two chicks settled down out in the run.
Everything seemed calm, so I set about weeding the fruit bushes as they're in ear shot.
Jim set off to mow the top two fields with a brilliant Allen Sythe thing we've borrowed and covet - we must return it this week or a friendship may become strained.
After a couple of hours of quiet weeding, Jim appeared back talking to Harriet and Gem who followed him across the fields. The potential foster chick started cheeping, ran around the run barging into the tiny chicks. Mrs Hopperty's had had enough - in a good natured way she fanned out her wings, got her chicks protectively beneath her and glowered at the interloper. It wasn't going to work.
It had to go back.
Thinking about it now, I believe that hearing Jim's voice had excited it as Jeff the rescuer sat at night with the chick on his shoulder and its crippled pal on his lap. I think the chick thought Jeff was its Mum & hearing Jim's voice......thought its Mum had come back! Or am I being daft?

Talking of poultry - which I do too much of, Jock The Cock (photo enclosed), my magnificent Scot's Grey cockeral has started attacking Jim. He's become so aggressive he may have to go to that big soup pot in the sky. ( Jock - not Jim )

As an aside I just watched The Street on BBC 1 by Jimmy McGovern - It is brilliant writing, excellent acting. Best thing on the telly in years.