MURDER REDEMPTION

You may remember that I wrote a post a while back about my tedious ability to murder animals with my car.

Whilst I am busy running birds and animals down, Stuart is busy collecting them from the side of the road. Not the dead ones, but the injured ones.

The first bird he brought home was a galah (also called a 'pink and grey' cockatoo), whom we rushed to a avian vet. That bird started bleeding out of his nostrils and did not make it the night.

The second bird was a rainbow lorikeet. This bird was hit by a car. We put him in a cage and kept the conditions safe and warm. Within a few days he was lively and did not have any broken bones or injuries.

Stuart wanted to keep him, but at my insistance, he was released into the wild again.

The third bird was love bird, which was either released or escaped from being a household pet. Stuart was sitting at the outside table on his laptop when this love bird suddenly landed on the keyboard.

Of course love birds cannot survive the wild, so it was placed in a cage to live a happy life with our resident cockatiel (which prompted some concern as every bird that has a shared a cage with this particulat cockatiel has ended up dead within a week).

Now for the fourth bird rescue which just happened last night. Stuart came home from the local farmer's market and walked through the door with this thing clutched to his chest.

I, of course, remained calm. Not recognising it as a bird when I noticed this thing I screamed and jumped back a few feet.

It was a baby pink and grey which was hit by a car.

I got the spare bird cage out of the barn and grabbed a towel to wrap it up in and keep it warm.

The couple minutes it took to get back from the barn, the bird had gotten worse. His head was just hanging there, as if the spine had been severed. In fact, as I walking back up to the house with the cage and caught a glimpse of him, I thought he had passed on.

I made a nest with the towel and gently covered him to keep warm. I figured that when he dies, at least he would be comfortable.

Last night I wrapped the cage with a thick blanket to create a dark warm and quiet space for him.

This morning he was doing a lot better, sitting properly and head movement came back.

Then a few hours later he let out a soft "caw".

Just before, I was out there giving him fresh water in a very small dish and he then climbed on the side of the bowl and went to sleep.

He looks healthy, as in no broken wings, legs or spine. Just seems a little bit subdued and sleepy. Which is expected after such a trauma.

We will see how he is tomorrow and then next couple of days and if all is well then he will be released back into the wild.

ANNOUCEMENT, ANNOUCEMENT!

At this time, Hula Hank will not be taking on any new commitments.

Instead, Mr Hank will be focusing on improving and streamlining his existing commitments.

That is all.

DEAR ________________ ,

Dear All,

You have been jipped big time.

The last gathering I left you early to get more booze and I never came back. The reason is I swerved to avoid hitting another wittle wabbit when suddenly a kangaroo with a bazooka jumped in front of my car.

The little bugger was out for revenge!

I was driving as fast as I could, but there he was hopping behind me the whole time. Luckily he was a bad shot. He blew up a picking shed, a hen house and the mayonnaise factory before he got tired and gave up.

The good news is that I have a new bottle of chocolate liqueur, so today we will be having Chocolate Martinis.


Dear Mr Show,

A ‘windscreen’ is the same as a ‘windshield’ only a windscreen has bird beaks stuck in it.

The death lily, as I know you and Pumpkin were dying to know, is from South Africa. It is also called a calla lily and arum lily. I looked it up and the real name is Zantedeschia.

In regards to the name “Death Lily,” Wikipedia says it can be poisonous to livestock and children, but I have never heard that. Plus when I gave it to my kids to eat, nothing happened. So in probability the name “Death Lily” came from it being the flower of choice at funerals.

Here in Western Australia, it was brought over to be used in home gardens, but it got a bit out of control and now it is Plant Gone Wild. It grows everywhere there is a winter creek, dam or marshy paddock. It was declared a weed, which means that… well, I don’t know.

Someone told me that it was no longer allowed to be sold in nurseries or picked to be sold commercially; however the past few weeks I have seen small bunches of them for sale at $8.00 each.

There are hundreds of thousands growing in my winter creek… $8/bunch multiplied by hundreds of thousands… I should really set up a table on the tree lawn.


Dear Mom #1,

Can I have some of the pills you are on? My blog has been the same-o, same-o for the past year. Obviously I should change it again.

Actually that is a good idea. I mean how long can one live with the new drapes before changing the carpet?

Don’t worry! You are safe walking in my neighbourhood. I don’t aim for people only kangaroos, wittle wabbits and native birds. You will, however, need to watch out for the snakes, scorpions and poisonous spiders.


Dear Grandma J,

You want me to write about my childhood adventures under the bridge? Make me sound like I was troll trying to trap people who crossed the bridge.

So I should clarify that technically it was a viaduct and we never went inside because the water would wash us away and kill us plus satanists had rituals in there plus ghosts called it home plus Bloody Mary would appear if you said her name three times.

I have troubles remembering events from childhood (well, the good events anyway) unless I am prompted. Like when I went back to that viaduct and looked out over the river, I was flooded (no pun intended) with memories and feelings.

Possibly if I started to write about them, I would remember more, and even get the answers to many unanswered questions.



Dear Pumpkin Delight,

That picture was entitled “Self Portrait – Creek Crotch Shot” by Hula Hank. You should have seen the photos before I ate the banana that was in my pocket.

Thank you for the wonderful lemon recipe ideas. Here is the problem; most recipes only call for the zest of one lemon or 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. As I sit here and write this, I have 327 lemons sitting on my kitchen counter.

Maybe I just need to get over it and move on.

I did find an article in the LA Times of 101 things to do with lemons. It was quite informative. Did you know that using a lemon instead of a ball to play fetch with your dog, will freshen their breath?

I got it! Switch mayo with lemon butter, the sound might be more similar than thickened cream.



Dear JLO,

Where the hell are you?

GOODBYE WINTER, HELLO SPRING

I asked and you voted.

The post you most wanted to see was "Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring - A Photo Essay on the Seasonal Changes at The Farm"... or something.

Technically it was a tie between this and My Day as a Hot Dog, but I thought I would torture Pumpkin Delight by doing that one after this.

When we moved to the Hills I was unaware that it is actually a few degrees colder up here than down on the flats. I was thrilled about this as I do so enjoy cold weather (oh how I wish there was a dry sarcasm font).

After many blizzards with knee deep snow and Medusa-like arctic gusts which immediately froze one in their spot, I vowed that I never wanted to experience any weather colder than 70 degrees.

So you are telling me that it is colder up here by at least 5 degrees Celsius (which is like 100 degrees in Fahrenheit), frosts, has heavy fog and rains more?

... and hails???



With the winter comes the rains. Perth get absolutely no rain between November and April. However when it rains in the winter, it is heavy.

These heavy rains fill up the dry creek beds and life springs up in otherwise barren land.



Do you see those green plants on the side of the winter creek?

They are called Death Lilies. Another common name is Arum Lily and Canna Lily. Technically, they are a declared weed in Western Australia, however I consider them cut flowers free from the wild.

Every weekend I grab my secateurs, put on my wellies and head into the depths of the creek to cut a few vase full of these flowers.




In case you don't believe I really do go wading in creek here is the proof:



Actually, one of my favourite activities this winter was playing in the creek. Hey don't Tiger snakes love the water and marshy areas like the winter creek?

Why yes, they do. However they hibernate in the winter so it is safe. However now that it is warming up, the snakes will start to come out of hibernation, full of venom, grumpy and desperate for a feed.

Stuart says that my wellies would be enough protection from snake bites. I am not so sure. I asked a country friend of mine if this is true and she took a long pause, pulled in her face and said, "Well, it would definitely help."

So I may just let enjoying the lilies from afar for the rest of the season.

Good thing the lemon tree is bursting with about ten million lemons.



So far I have made many jars of preserved lemons, many many jars of limoncello and have four thousand cubes of frozen lemon juice. The kicker is, there are still nine million lemons left on the tree.

Any one have any good recipes for lemons??

The roses are all pruned sticks in the ground, the maples are barren skeletons lining the driveway and the flame tree has been extinguished. However in all of this barren forest the azaleas took the opportunity to put on a spectacular show.



It's an old lady pink, but still stunning.

However the show stopper of the spring was when the plum trees decided to turn from dark silhouettes into rows of graceful white blossoms.

WHY PETA HATES ME... AND OTHER TALES OF ATTEMPTED MURDER

I live in an area of Perth known simply as “The Hills”

It is a range of hills that surrounds the city not dissimilar to the Hollywood Hills in LA. However my hills are peppered with national forests, water catchment areas, orchards and wineries. All of this nature brings with it an abundance of wildlife at levels not seen down on the suburban “flats”.

One night I was driving home from work and suddenly this big brown speckled mass of feathers flew into my windscreen, creating a gigantic THUD! and then disappeared.

I started to freak out. I turned around to look for any beings lying on the side of the road but there was nothing. My mind started to wonder what it could have been that I hit.

This may come to no surprise to many of you, but I have a bit of supernatural paranoia when it comes to driving through rural forest areas in the dark. I think that ghosts are going to pop out, aliens are going to land and crazed murders with hooks for hands are going bounce my severed head against the car roof.

Naturally my first instinct was one of fear.

“Oh my god, I just hit the Mothman! I just set off a prophecy. I don’t even have a signal on my phone to tell everyone I love them before I die!!!”

When I pulled my self together I deduced that it was not the Mothman, but was in fact a Kookaburra.

Yes, I just killed a Kookaburra. The guilt set in and I wished it was actually the Mothman.

A few days later, Stuart and I were driving home around midnight, going at full speed (90 km/h) I turned a bend and there were three kangaroos lined up across the road. Papa, Mama and Baby, in that order.

There was a slight space in between Papa Roo and Mama Roo, so I slammed on my breaks and aimed for that space, however Mama Roo kept bouncing forward and the space grew smaller and before I could say “Get out of the way”… THUD!!!!

Yes, that is right folks, I am the Australian equivalent to that hunter who killed Bambi’s mother.

For the next week, I felt awful. Those big sweet eyes and that poor orphaned Baby Roo, the widowed Papa Roo. I cried into my martini six times that week.

I cried into my martini so many times that I had to head down to the bottle shop to get a new bottle of vodka.

On the way home from the bottle shop, again at full speed, a wittle bunny wabbit comes wacing out of the woods and wight into my front tyre. I will spare you the details of how the wittle wabbit went flying through the air, but just know that I am still, two weeks on, having nightmares.

When I arrived home (and for the record I was not drunk driving that night. I was picking up the bottle of vodka because I ran out the night before) I asked Stuart,

“How many animals have you killed since we moved here?”

“None.”

So it is just me. I am an animal murderer.


WHICH TALE DO YOU WANT TO READ ABOUT NEXT? VOTE OVER THERE =======>

WHO WAS THE IDIOT THAT SET UP THIS POLL?

OK, as it turns out most of you (and I dare say ALL of you) are actually voting for every single topic. Who was the idiot that allowed for multiple selections?

Despite the relatively even number of votes for each tale, the current leader (by one vote)is "Why PETA Hates Me - and other tales of attempted murder".

Even though the poll is technically open for another 6 days, I am going to shut it down at an unspecified time and equally random which could be in 5 minutes or 5 hours depending on when the martinis kick in.

I NEED MENTAL METAMUCIL...

...and you are just the Nurse Nancy to give it to me!

Crazy and wonderful things are happening that I would love to share, but for a week or two every time I sat down to write about them the best I could come up with was

"Today I saw a cat. The cat was cute. The cat was black. I like the cat."

Now, so many things have happened that I don't even know where to begin.

So I am leaving it up to you to decide.

Over there on the right is a poll with many topics that I would like to share. Just vote for which one you want to know about the most. The topic with the most votes gets written about first.

Without further ado, vote..... NOW!

PS - Happy Birthday to Pumpkin Delight.

UPDATE

PSS - BY POPULAR DEMAND / OUTRAGE AT NOT OFFERING THE HOT DOG WALK AS A VOTING OPTION, I WANTED TO STATE ON THE RECORD, THAT I WILL BE SHARING THAT DAY WITH YOU, BUT IN A VERY SPECIAL WAY, WHICH IS ALSO HULA HANK FIRST.