manimal update

at risk of further damaging my effette one-coast-or-other liberal persona - and maybe painting myself as a hick - it's time for a manimal update

which gives me a chance to shamelessly reproduce some pix - you might remember my baby quail called Cheney - this from his first day


and this hiding up inside his mummy's skirt

Cheney has been liberated like an iraqi! (IOW, i havent seen him for 2 days) - hopefully he has been liberated like a purple-stained iraqi, and not liberated like a blood-stained iraqi.

actually - ignore that iraqi nonsense - let's just hope that he is well and/or happy wherever he is.

i have previously mentioned that there is another bunch of quail eggs under another hen (or 'chook' as we call them in oz - which is presumably an abbreviation of 'chicken') - they seem to have been incubating there forever, and i didnt hold much hope for them - but when i had a peek under mummy2 this evening, i could see that some of the eggs were broken - which hopefully means that some have hatched. i'm not quite sure how the mechanics work - but from what i gather, the hens must be able to moderate the incubation somehow by shifting eggs around and whatnot (moderating the heat), and i guess they try to get them to hatch at the same ( ie within a day or two of each other). At some point, mum decides that it isnt worth hanging around an extra day for the others to hatch and she somehow gets the post-hatched babies out of the nest - which is elevated a few feet above the ground - and she leaves the rest to die an unfortunate death. from what i can gather, it's a delicate call, cos some of the unhatched eggs aren't far behind - and it's not uncommon to find a few eggs which are only partly hatched - which reminds me, for some reason, of a metallica video... (and baby jesus cried - all those unliberated unborn. tis a cruel, vengeful, God)

in any case, Cheney has disappeared, and hopefully i'll have some pix of new baby quail (quails?) to pull at your heart strings in the next day or so - given that i named Cheney, Cheney, you won't be surprised to hear me say "The king is dead (*cough* liberated *cough*), Long Live the King"

the other farmlet news of the day is that i found a tiny baby rabbit in the vegie garden - it's not a great pic (i'll try to get a better one), but here s/he is


cute, no? (and yes, it really is a rabbit) i think s/he has something like 8 siblings - most are black, or white, but this one has bits of both - a white underbelly, and white inside the ears. adorable.

yes, that's my pinkie finger, and little rabbit was actually crouched up on it's back legs. and, no, my hand doesn't really look that fat in real life - it was just all scrunched up, trying to make sure that the rabbit didnt fall out (besides, the camera adds ten pounds).

s/he's just a short rabbit - so i think i'll 'christen' it Rabbi