It’s hard to believe that next week is March already and it’s been well over a week since my last posting.
With the Quails, things are progressing well. We have five babies which included the one that preferred to laze about on her back the whole time, absorbing the rays from the light. Since then she has decided to get onto her feet, however I have noticed that she seems to be a little different to the rest of the family. Without being a medical specialist (read: no medical knowledge at all) I think that her spine and neck have hardened into a curved position. This means that she hangs her little head to the right a lot more and tends to go in right curves rather than straight lines when she’s walking. We’ll be keeping a close eye on her to see what happens, at the moment that is the only problem that she has and seems to be walking around (emphasis on round) quiet nicely. Even with the curvature of the neck, she seems to be eating and drinking.
The Geckos are still not in the gecko house. We’re still waiting on the paper work to be sorted out and approved before the permits are issued. (The same can be said for the permits for the birds, i.e. being worked on). The good thing is that I have a definite pair of Naultinus grayii : Northland Green Gecko coming my way and Fiona has a (male and female) pair of Red Crowned Kakariki that has also been sourced from two different suppliers. What I am not sure about with the geckos is if they are a breeding pair or both of the same sex. Time will tell. At least the gecko house is ready, although every weekend seems to have me making alterations and improvements. This weekend I added another Pongo log and some guttering for the house. Another two branches also went into the main area. It’s good to see that the two native trees have taken and the watering system seems to operating well.
Our aviary that we purchased a little while ago is still not ready for us. The owners that we purchased the aviary from, still have to sell four birds that they have housed in the aviary. They’re not a breed that we want to get involved with, so we’re won’t be taking them on.
At least we have organised a moving company to come and lift the big thing over the front gate for us. Our backs should be fine as we stand to one side and shout out orders: this way, no that way, no-no it’s better the way it was.
Although perhaps this is not a good thing, I remember while we were still living in South Africa we purchased an extra length king sized bed and had it delivered. The two delivery men arrived with the bed and mattress. They promptly took the mattress upstairs and dumped it in the bedroom, but when it came to moving the base they discovered a little problem. The height from the step to the ceiling was less than the width of the base, by about two or three centimetres. You know one of those “oh so close but not close enough” situations. After battling for about 20-30 minutes they decided that they had delivered the base and mattress and it was time for them to leave. We tried to explain that delivery meant to the bed room, but with a roll of the eyes and words that I couldn’t understand, the two of them left.
It was then left to Fiona, her dad and myself to move the base up the stairs. We eventually got it up the stairs, although I did have to (violently) remove a small section of ceiling from the stairwell.
On the novel side (African Christmas – the diary of Robert Edward Lees), the final version has been edited and is now available for download. Some things to note…
Normal print version – A4 120+ pages
Large Print Version – A4 190+ pages.
In both of the above mentioned files, wrapped as Adobe PDF files, the front cover image has been removed. This was to reduce the file size from 20 Megabytes to a little over one Megabyte.
Links will be visible on the right hand menu for the manuscripts.
Well I suppose that is about it for now.
Take care
Later Days
EsP
Filed under: Birds, Geckos, Ink Scorpion
