Be Quiet Or We'll Eat You

So Mr. Noisy Four O'Clock Hey Wassa Happenin' DOODLE OODLE DOO rooster is still alive, because (a) I feel a little bit bad about killing him, (b) he's still a bit scrawny and (c) I think he's twigged on that the axe is sitting next to the chicken pen for a reason. I get up a couple of hours before Gary so I can enjoy the cool part of the day, and when ol' rooster starts up I go to the kitchen window and hiss "SHH! HE CAN HEAR YOU!", which, amazingly, shuts him up for the rest of the morning. He's started cockadoodledooing quietly, if you can imagine!

Then Ethel and Matilda fly over the top of the coop and start pecking on the roof of the bedroom shed, so I have to lure them away with lettuce and then get the puppies to herd them up. Bandit corners the chook and puts her front paws on it to hold it down, then I pick the chook up. Vincent thinks the game is to catch the chook and then pull its head off with his teeth, so I'm working on that one...

The big news of course is that Mum's hard work has paid off and our book is officially on Amazon! We only need 857,000 more sales and the yacht is ours. The shops in Meeka have all put their hand up to sell some on the shelves and I'll be prowling the streets, press-ganging locals into buying a copy each.

The summer storm season is lurking but still no rain - just a few teasing drops here and there, stinking hot and humid, and big thunderheads which just cruise by to go and rain on Newman. I'm watering the wild grass outside the north fence of the compound for the poor kangaroos, they come in nearly every night and there are also a couple of bungarras who come to the roo pond while we're asleep. Enormous flocks of budgies sweep past, and we have a few regular visitors to the roo pond during the day - wagtails, topknots, butcher birds, bower birds. The ground is now baked rock hard with a thick layer of bulldust and I suspect that we'll get flooded in here when we do get a big rainfall, so we're making sure everything's off the floor. We won't be able to get the car or bus in or out when it rains (the ground turns to mushy mud two feet deep), so we'll have to rely on Gary's work ute, or swim to work.

That reminds me, better go stock up at the shops for when the town gets cut off by the floods! Or Mr. Rooster will definitely end up on a plate.