African Grey Pirates and Other Birds

When I started putting animals together on the farm, I thought quite a lot about comfort, safety and compatibility but I never really thought that the animals might start to take over. However, I'm seeing definite signs of a change in the balance of power in the aviary and now small signals in the house. The only bird in the house until recently has been Mona, my one-legged African Grey. She lost her right foot to
predators unknown last year and has made a brilliant recovery, living in state in the living room where she can comment on my taste in music and television. (She likes Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews, and Bob Marley...interesting choices to whistle along to.) Lately a pair of house sparrows has taken to flying into the living room as soon as I open the front door, which stands open most of the day. They spend a lot of time trying to build a nest in some very nice brass lamps that hang in the room and I spend a lot of time telling them to get out. It makes life inside almost as interesting as it is in the aviary.

The aviary is a grouping of three cubes that are each three metres on a side. Each cube has a door that opens on a service room that in turn opens to the outdoors. When I built the aviary at the farm, I'd already built one at my old house and was hoping to move the old one here, but when that couldn't happen I decided to wire the cubes with a wire that has smaller holes than the old aviary, so that a) rats can't get in and b) whatever bit off Mona's foot is kept out. The base of every cube is built of stuccoed brick to a height of a metre to allow the birds the privacy to walk around on the ground without the dogs going ballistic. All very good planning, and then the birds began redecorating the place.

The first thing to happen was that the Cuban Amazons discovered that if they chewed hard enough on the wire, they could make a hole. There is nothing that a parrot likes better than a hole. One of them slipped through the hole causing great concern among my grooms and neighbours, but I noticed that she hung around calling to the other Cuban, who didn't seem to feel that escape was such a brilliant idea. For 36 hours I had one Cuban inside and another one on the outside trying madly to figure out how to get back. The food service just isn't that super on the outside, I guess. Finally we left the service room door open and she flew in, and from there back to her cage. The next thing that they began chewing was the wire mesh between the cubes and the service room. At first I would patch it but after a while I just gave up. No one was escaping to the outside anymore. I had four new budgies that appeared and demanded to be let in, and a pair of lovebirds that even now sometimes leave the cage for an hour or two and then return, usually with some interesting straw or grass for their nest box.

Within a month or two of moving the parrots and budgies in (and having the new budgies and lovebirds appear) we began bringing other rather more useful birds to the aviary. In one cube we added a pair of bronze turkeys, although they turned out to be a pair of hens...that's okay because turkey eggs are delicious. In another cube we added a trio of Muscovy ducks, Donald, Daphne, and Daisy, who hopefully will soon be providing us with some baby ducks. Initially, Fritzi the Grey was sharing the cube with the ducks and budgies, but for a while we had to move him to the cube with Ali the Grey and Bamba the Bahamian Amazon because he was stealing the duck eggs and rolling them around the cube. Monster. The ducks were getting quite perturbed and I caught Frizi dangling by a wing from Donald's beak one day. That's when he got moved. The Cubans shared their cube with a flock of baladi chickens and a rooster to which were added four rabbits.


Once all of these creatures were in place, life REALLY got interesting. Fritzi started the remodeling with a window to the service room so that he could break into the stores of sunflower seeds. Once Ali and the Cubans saw this there was no stopping them. Before you could say "Noah's Ark" the parrots were moving freely all over the aviary and every time I would go in, I would count heads to see that they were all still there. No one ever left but the parrots were having a ball playing musical cages. Oddly enough the budgies and the lovebirds always stay in their own cage with an occasional foray into the service room, or in the case of the lovebirds outside. I've checked the cubes carefully and there are budgie/lovebird/sparrow sized holes to the outside all over the place but the sparrows and lovebirds are the only ones to take advantage of them.

After about six weeks of all this moving, some patterns seem to be stabilising. The two Greys, Ali and Fritz appear to have decided that they like living with the rabbits and chickens most of the time. In fact one of them is often perched in the window between that cube and the service as if to keep the other parrots out. Sometimes we find them walking around on the floor of the cage investigating the nesting boxes of the chickens or the clay pot where the rabbits like to sleep. The chickens and rabbits seem to be comfortable enough with the parrots...at least they don't carry them around like the ducks. I'm a bit apprehensive regarding the imminent arrival of baby rabbits. After twenty years with Ali, I know better than to assume that Greys are just charming vegetarians.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

New Arrivals

As a horse owner you try hard to monitor a pregnant mare as she approaches her foaling date. When Diva, my young bay mare, came near her expected delivery date, we moved her and her best friend Shaboura, another young mare, to a paddock near the grooms' room so that they could watch her more closely. Just before foaling, there are usually signs that we were hoping to catch so that she would start spending nights in the box, which would be a safer place for her to give birth. Diva, however, had other ideas. The evening of March 8, one of a neighbour's grooms stopped by to give us the sad news that the stallion who had sired Diva's foal had died that evening just as one of my grooms was setting out to check the horses. I got an almost unintelligible phone call to say that Diva had given birth in the paddock.

Making sure that the dogs were securely stuck inside the house garden so that they couldn't run amok and terrify the new mother, I dashed outside with a flashlight. There in the middle paddock stood Diva over her soaking wet daughter. We gathered the baby up and walked the mare to the box at the end of the row of paddocks where clean dry straw was waiting. We carefully laid the filly on the straw and watched Diva as she nuzzled and cleaned the little creature. As we rubbed her with straw to dry her and stimulate circulation she began to struggle to stand. Organising four long legs under a tiny body isn't easy at all. We called the owner of the sire who lives just down the road and he came over to help us get her nursing properly and taking her first poop, both the essential tasks of birth. It all took until about 2 am, time well spent in assuaging the pain of the loss of the stallion. We named the filly Negmat Sallamat (Greetings' Star) as her father had been a very well bred Arabian stallion Sallamat.

The next morning, we put the mother and filly out in one of the paddocks in the sun to give her a chance to meet the world during the daylight. We had allowed the dogs out the night before once the horses were in the box and they had all lined up at the door to greet the new arrival, who wobbled over to sniff noses. Now they lined up at the paddock fence and waited for permission to enter to meet the filly. Sabah the Sloughi and her partner in crime Demon were the first ones in to greet. Mother stood quietly just watching as they approached. Negmat was interested at first but quickly decided that it was naptime and dogs just weren't interesting enough to keep her awake. At this point most of the dogs decided to come and have a good sniff while the filly slept. She was utterly fascinating. The other horses also watched carefully from the other paddocks nearby, Shaboura crying out every so often to Diva. She had been extremely upset the evening before when we moved Diva and her daughter to the box. When we'd arrived we found the donkey family, Shaboura, and the gelding Jack in the next paddock all standing along the fenceline watching intently.The horses and dogs have a very good relationship for some reason. The dogs occasionally go into the large paddock and bark to see which horses will run so that they can chase them. I don't understand why the horses don't kick the dogs, but they don't. They seem to tolerate the canine foolishness very well, much better than I do. Both Negmat and Fagr, Dorika's last foal who is now about four and a half have made friends with the dogs immediately on birth.A foal's first few weeks are very much a matter of nursing, sleeping, and a bit of play, with a great deal of time spent asleep. The soundness of the sleep of a baby anything is a wonder to behold. I couldn't have slept a wink with a dozen dogs nosing me, but she certainly managed to. After a short nap, however, Negmat decided that it was time to get up again.The next day we had yet another arrival when one of the goats who share the paddock with the donkey family had two daughters as well. Baby goats are tiny, about the size of a cat, and have to be some of the most adorable creatures in the world. Our new ones are both black with some white spots on the face, ears and legs. The grooms decided that the best solution for these tiny babies was to spend the nights in the room with the groom who would be sleeping over, to be sure that no one bothered the newborns and that they would be warm enough.So far all the new ones are doing very well. Negmat is proving to be an easy handler with all the cuddling that she's getting. She's gaining control of those long legs and promises to be much taller than her mother. She's also going to be grey eventually rather than the pale chestnut colour that she currently sports, but the process will take years and she will turn a new colour every time she sheds. I had a birthday barbecue yesterday evening, just a group of my neighbours and friends, and after dinner we all went trooping about to visit the babies. The kids were a big hit and the experience of holding a sleepy baby goat in your arms is unforgettable.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Mideast Youth..a worthwhile stop

I have a permanent Google News alert that sends me a daily email with all the news items that contain the word "Egypt" and lately Google has expanded the service to include blogs. On the downside I know more about the football team of Egypt, Illinois than I ever wanted to, but today I hit a lovely upside. Following a link on a blog item regarding a recent statement by Egyptian judges against the idea of women being named as judges, I found Mideast Youth. This site is a cooperative venture by a large number of young people with various connections to the Middle East. The authors come from Egypt, Sudan, Bahrain, Iran, Israel, and a few other places as well.

Wandering around the site reading poetry, political blogs, humour and all the other things that they offer reminded me of the gatherings of young people in our house in Maadi when my children were still living at home. There is a wonderful light and breadth to young conversations in this part of the world. Politics are part of the air that they breath and most of my children's friends were multinational children, many of whom had been raised in at least three or four countries, giving them an unusual insight on life.

If you want to have some idea what young people are thinking and feeling, this is an excellent resource, and if you just want to be entertained for a bit, it's a hit as well. This is what blogging is all about.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The Complaints Department

So I live in a place that is sunny almost every day and I can ride my horses out my gate into the Sahara Desert to visit pyramids and the food is wonderful because it's fresh all year round. So what can I possibly complain about? Today, I can complain about plenty, most of which I can't do a bloody thing to solve.

I have a Daily City Photo blog for Cairo that hasn't had a photo for days because my internet connection is so erratic that I can't upload any photos. Vodafone Mobile Connect is not my friend these days. I sit for hours trying to open one email while the network goes from strong to weak to nothing over the course of seconds. Since most of my email time is spent at night, I'm hitting the pillow one frustrated sleeper and I believe that my dreams are beginning to reflect the situation. I tried to call Vodafone last night but their customer service department wasn't answering. Sweet.

On the other hand, maybe my photo problem is originating from Blogger as well, since every time I click on the little picture icon the magic swirling button on my Mac starts and then stops as if it's forgotten what I'm asking it. At this point, since I need my internet connection to reach Blogger, it's sort of a chicken and egg issue. First thing, I'm going to go after Vodafone since they are theoretically at least at the end of a phone line. If I have to I'll go to their offices as well.

Then there is a more existential problem that has been bothering me lately. I'm concerned over the women (mostly seem to be in their 40's or so) who are falling for some smooth chat on the internet with some of our charming Egyptian males (mostly in their 20's or so) and they contact me with ideas of coming to Egypt and marrying this adoring young Adonis. First, I'm not happy that there are so many women who are so unsure of themselves, so unpleased with their lives, and feeling the need to be loved that they fall for these characters that they are meeting in chat rooms. I also am concerned about the real lack of information on cultural differences and so on which prompts the emails that I get in the wake of some new internet romance.

I have always felt that there was a a basic inequity in the way that society has usually felt that men just grow more powerful and distinguished with age while women get old. Old, my ass. I'm sorry but maybe the packaging is getting a bit tatty, but I swear that at pushing 60 I can outride, outdream, outplan, and probably outtalk (they'll agree to that one!) most of the men I know in my age group. On the other hand, I also don't feel the need to find some adoring male to prove to myself that I'm "still a woman". You can't stop being a women, girls. You are stuck with being a woman. However, the aspect does change and we aren't going to be Angelina Jolie all of our lives...for that matter, neither is she. No matter how many times we snip, nip, pull, shrink, whatever, our bodies and faces, we age. It is really sad that especially in Europe and North America, aging is now looked on like a disease...to be cured with diet, exercise and cosmetic surgery.

I have wrinkles in places where I didn't have them at thirty and there are parts of me that are there in places where they weren't when I was thirty, and there are parts of me that simply hurt more than they did when I was thirty. That's because I'm not thirty and I never will be again, thank heaven. Maybe those extra spots are where I've been tucking the wisdom that one has the chance to accumulate in thirty years. I like to think that. I tell these women who email me about this young man who "truly loves" them to think about the future, to think about the fact that nothing in Egyptian society supports older woman/younger man marriages other than the economic reality that a foreign wife is often an asset in that she is likely to be less demanding than an Egyptian wife and more likely to have marketable skills to bring in income. However, the real tragedy isn't in the fact that these alliances are formed based on false pretexts, but in the fact that the need is there to form them.

Living alone isn't the greatest thing in the world. There are times when I miss being able to laugh over private jokes with Diaa, times when I miss being able to argue with him over something. But you can't change what you have before you as you might wish to, so learning to find the joy and beauty that is also there is a skill to be encouraged. I've learned to appreciate my friends so much more, to make the effort to try to see them and to have them out or over for coffee or a barbecue. So it isn't the best thing in the world, but it sure as hell isn't the worst thing either.

The worst thing is when your internet doesn't work right.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The Mother Of Bureaucracy

I recently sold my jeep, having found that it wasn't in the greatest of shape after being dropped into a canal a few months ago. I wasn't in the car when she went swimming. I'd loaned her to a neighbour who needed to do something one night, and he was run off the road by a large dump truck that was tooling along going the wrong way on a one way road without lights. Welcome in Egypt. Happily, no one was hurt, but the jeep has never been quite the same. After some searching around, I found someone who would give me a pretty decent price for the car and went into Maadi to transfer the ownership of the car.

The place where this sort of thing is done is one of those offices that most tourists and even most ex-pats never see during their stays in this fair country. Shahr el Qari is a very special place. I'm not sure what it would be somewhere else, but here it is where all powers of attorney are registered, where all sales of property such as cars, land, buildings are registered and it has to be the most crowded chaotic place in the universe. Because most of my late husband's companies were based in Maadi, and we lived in Maadi, I had occasion to get to know the people in our local Shahr el Qari fairly well while I was sorting out his estate. I think hardly a week went by when something or other wasn't being registered and the staff there got to know me rather well. I guess that there weren't too many foreign women coming in there that often.

I've always gone in to the Shahr el Qari with someone to run interference for me and to chase down the right people to sign, stamp and register the pertinent papers. I'm spoiled and I appreciate it very much. To do anything in that office you have to have paid at least three or four fees and collected the right selection of coloured papers to show to the people working at the desks. This time my faithful Mohamed Said (in the striped sweater) worked his way through the crowds in the office to collect the scraps of paper and the signatures we needed to finish the sale of the car. Honestly, if I had to do it myself, the process could take days.

At one point in the process we reached the stage where the director of the Shahr el Qari, a very friendly woman about my age, had to stamp things, and we came into her office. She had to send Mohamed back out into the crush to register or sign or stamp something else, so she offered me the use of the sofa in her room. While I was sitting there waiting for whatever had to be done, a man came in with his small son in tow on a similar paper chase. The director appeared to know this gentleman as well and suggested that he could leave the boy on another chair in the office while he also chased stamps, papers and signatures. The child settled in the chair and happily munched away on potato chips while he watched visitors come into the office to receive the final stamps on whatever it was they were doing that day. The two of us were probably the only people in the entire office who were relaxed that day because it was a Thursday and the whole place was closing down early at noon, making the work rather frantic.

After approximately an hour and a half of playing sardines in a series of four or five adjoining offices, I was called to a desk where they looked at my passport to be sure that I was actually who I claimed to be and then they asked in Arabic just what it was that we were doing with these papers to be sure that no one was having me sign something bogus, and then wrote immensely long sentences in Arabic in a large register which I had to sign three times in different places, and we were done. We took a paper to the car's new owner where we received a plastic bag containing bundles of money to be counted and verified and ultimately deposited in a bank. Mabrouk. The car is sold.
copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Random Thoughts on Supporting The Soul

I haven't posted for a while. Life has been busy and stressful. That's right, life on the farm isn't all fresh eggs and sunshine...though they are some of the more reliable parts of it. My friend Tracy went back to California to study some workshop techniques employing horses, got together with some friends and formed a company there to do the workshops in various places including Egypt and decided that she needed to be sort of based in California to work with them and to be closer to her aging parents. She put her house on the market and it sold, happily to a lovely British couple who are also long-term residents of Egypt, so she hopped on a plane back to Cairo, cleaned out her house and closed the deal. She also lined up some work here, and I suspect will be back for at least a week or so in March. Now I'm helping Philippa and Rob get started with their life at the house next door.

A lot of my friends and family are going through some pretty major changes right now. My daughter is applying to graduate schools and while we are hoping for good news, it's pretty tough waiting it out. The son survived a week of tough interviews for internships next summer and has a choice of places to work like a corporate coolie when his classes finish. Deep breath of relief.

I'm still trying to extricate myself from the remaining links to my late husband's companies, and that is not going all that well. Pretty high reading on the stress meter. The brothers-in-law have decided that they want to sell their parents' apartment, which is primarily owned by my children although they have no interest in it. They offered to sign off on their share in the family house in Sharm el Sheik in return for our share in the apartment and a rather hefty cash payment. In theory, all very nice but where is that cash supposed to come from? After seven years, they insist on believing that somehow we were left with little pots of gold all over the world. What universe do these people inhabit? Whoops! the lid just shot off the stress meter.
So last night was Valentine's Day and Tracy's last night in Cairo on this trip. She's left me with bags of vitamins, nail polish and all those funny things that you forget you have stuffed into the bottom drawer in the bathroom. Cool, but I have my own bottom drawer and it's pretty full. We went into town to meet some women friends for dinner, then she would go on with them to catch a cab from town for her early morning flight. Tracy and I had totally forgotten Valentine's Day while I was dealing with various small problems at home like an injured donkey and a sick dog. The restaurant was full of couples chatting intimately over candlelit plates of pasta and the four of us who all happen to be single, some of us single parents, found ourselves talking about the things that sustain us in hard times.

Naturally friends are important. That one is a no brainer. Then there is family, which is great when it's good, but a disaster if it's bad. Don't I know that one. Wish my side of the family lived closer. But those are things that we find outside of ourselves. Most of us had found that there were things that we carry within us that are even more important when the chips are down and so is our luck and buoyancy. Each of us could recall a blow to our lives that caused us to reevaluate our surroundings, our thoughts and practices, something that unbalanced us enough to make us see the world anew and we could remember how we first saw something new that we stashed away in our hearts. For myself, the death of my husband was the unbalancing point and the rides that I would take in the countryside at night alone with my mare the first summer were my secret treasure that could bring me back to the now. I'd been knocked so badly off my balance that every bird, every star, every wedding song meandering through the mango orchards was something new to be studied, turned over and carefully stored away to treasure forever. It took a horror to teach me about beauty, and it was hard to accept that the beauty could be there and be stronger than the horror. But it was and it has sustained me. Others had the same experience after a particularly nasty divorce, the loss of a parent, and so on. We all felt very fortunate that we'd been able to learn from and bounce back from our disasters with something stronger to show for it.

The photos are pretty random, but each one of them is one of those images that warms my soul.


copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

When A Flight Cage Becomes A Jungle

When I moved to the country, I decided that my parrots should have more room to stretch their wings than they'd had before. I built three flight cages in the garden of my rental house, each a three metre cube that opened on a service room. My Amazons turned out to be two subspecies who didn't always get along (Cubans and Bahamians), and the two African Grey males each got their own flight, between which the female, Mona, used to bounce trying to decide who was the more attractive male. While the cage wire was strong, the holes in the cages were large enough to let in both rats and sparrows, so when I moved to the farm, I decided to replicate the cages but with a smaller gauge wire so that the sparrows and rats wouldn't be able to get in. Since I'd never seen the parrots chewing on the cage wires I opted for a lighter weight wire as well.

Ah, the best laid plans of bird owners and women often go astray. The parrots were initially very comfortable in the new cage, partly I suspect because I moved them into essentially the same cages that they'd had before, just with different scenery. Mona, the female Grey, had been the victim of a leg attack by creatures unknown last winter and was living in the house, as she still does at present, so the males were on their own with the company for Ali of the Bahamian, while the Cubans got the cage on the west side of the complex. Once we got everyone settled, I decided to get two pair of budgies to share Fritzi's cage with him. I like the sounds of budgies and their social life is very entertaining. We set them up with some nest boxes and sat back to enjoy the view. The first thing that I noticed was that the Cubans became bored and decided to chew a hole in the lighter gauge wire of their cage, and one of them got out. I was a bit concerned about predators such as the neighbourhood children, but since the other Cuban remained in the cage, and meals were still being served with regularity inside while not outside, I wasn't all that concerned that the parrot was going too far. In fact she hung around for about 36 hours trying frantically to remember how she got out (not called a bird brain for nothing!) until we left the service room door open and she flew in. That was the last bird to leave, but then the budgies and the lovebirds began arriving. We found ourselves with a pair of lovebirds who must have escaped from a nearby home and about four new budgies, all of whom appear to have been attracted by the sounds of the parrots.

Then we decided to get some new poultry, since our last group of chickens became soup when a farm within sneezing distance came down with the bird flu. The local vet called me to tell me to do in the chickens before they got sick and I obeyed. Once people began restocking poultry, I bought about eight young hens and a rooster who were moved in with the Cubans. A day or so later, my driver came home with what he said was a pair of bronze turkeys, both of whom later were shown to be hens. That's okay since turkey eggs are excellent, but one of these days we need to get a nice gobbler. The turkeys moved in to clean up after Ali and the Bahamian.

Our next arrivals were a trio of Muscovy ducks, two ducks and a drake (Daphne, Daisy, and Donald respectively) who were put in with Fritzi. One might ask why all the poultry was in the aviary, but the aviary is the safest place for these birds with 120 cm tall brick walls at the base to provide privacy from a pack of Rat Terriers who seem to think that they are all just feathered rodents. The dogs watch all the birds from the screened door of the service room, a sort of dog television. Daphne was obviously in a nesting mood and promptly began producing eggs in a nest in an old cat carrier, while the budgies and lovebirds were inspired either by cooler weather or by Daphne's devotion to the cause to begin laying millions of eggs in the wooden nest boxes above.

Other than an imminent population explosion, life in the bird house seemed pretty stable until Fritzi got bored over a couple of days and decided to chew himself a window/door to the service room where he could raid the sunflower seed stores. He was quite delighted with the arrangement and could be seen prowling the service room all during the day, though he was careful to be home for dinner in the evening or there for breakfast in the morning. He also took to rolling the duck eggs out of the nest box, a habit that did not endear him to the Muscovy's at all, and they were seen chasing him to the screen door where he would scramble to safety. In my concern for his piratical activities, I decided to move him into Ali and the Bahamian's cage for a while. This allowed the ducks to settle down a bit and Daphne began sitting on about a dozen eggs with a few chicken eggs as well that I tucked into her nest. But peace was not to reign.

During a trip to a local market with friends my driver disappeared for a while and reappeared with a cardboard box which he deposited in my friend's lap. As we drove off she exclaimed, "There are rabbits in here!" and in fact, Mohamed had bought me two albino does and a brown and white spotted buck who were named in honour of the visitors Casey, Sue and John...very imaginative names. The females are utterly indistinguishable, so we have no idea who is Casey and who is Sue.

Initially, the chickens, with whom it was decided that the rabbits would live, were terrified of them. The feeding time visits between cages that had apparently been motivated by a strong certainty that anyone else's food was better than that in the home cage, now took on an atmosphere of flight from the long-eared monsters. Chickens, however, don't seem to have very long memories and they soon settled down. The opposite was true of the parrots, however. After watching Fritzi come and go at will, the rest of the parrots decided to follow suit and they all chewed holes to the service room through which they began visiting each others' cages all day. At first they would all go home to their home cages at night, but that pattern has also gone by the wayside.

It is now anyone's guess where the parrots will be when I go to feed them or to visit and take some treats. Perhaps Ali the Grey will be with the Cubans, while Fritzi and the Bahamian hang out with the ducks or turkeys. And they don't bother to go home at night anymore either. I've been moving food dishes around the cages to try to accommodate the shifting populations, and I watch for any signs of aggression, but so far it's all peaceful. We still have the cocktail party atmosphere at feeding time when everyone goes wandering to check out what is left over at the neighbours' places, everyone including the rabbits at this point, who hop over to the ducks' or turkeys' places to check out the goodies. The ducks are not quite sure what to make of these fuzzy creatures who don't seem to care if they are hissed at.

The flight cages themselves are brick for the first metre or so and have concrete floors which are covered in chopped straw. The straw is very animal friendly material, providing scratching places for the turkeys and chickens, and comfortable sitting areas for the ducks and rabbits. The parrots and second story birds get a diet of chopped fruits and vegetables along with a baked parrot bread and sunflower seeds in the winter. All the extras get tossed to the ground floor birds and the rabbits who are learning that bird food in this neighbourhood is pretty good. We chop berseem, a type of clover that we grow for the horses, goats, donkeys, sheep and water buffalo, into short lengths for the poultry and the rabbits are happy to help devour it. The chickens and ducks have some old animal carriers to use as nest boxes, while the turkeys prefer a corner of their cage. The rabbits have a large terra cotta jar on its side to use as a den, along with a cardboard box and the corner of the cage between the chicken nest and the wall. So every species has its niche, and so far there has been no bloodshed in defending them, although the ducks get pretty testy if someone disturbs Daphne's nest. I've thought about getting better wire and separating everyone into neat boxes again, but they all seem to be having such a good time that I think I will just observe this little wild corner of the planet for a while and see how they all work things out.

Oh, and the sparrows? From day one they figured out that they could simply walk into the service room under the door and from there move from cage to cage. I have no idea how many are living in there or whether they stay or rotate in and out, but the population is very healthy.

copyright 2007 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani