the Nightmare of animal ownership...
Tonight is GuyFawkes night in New Zealand. Two days ago new people moved into my neighbourhood from South Australia. I thought I had better warn them about Guy Fawkes as they have cats and dogs newly uncrated from travel and in a strange environment.
They could not believe New Zealand still celebrated Guy Fawkes or that it allowed personal use of fireworks by its Citizens. Many of us agree with them and in spite of signing a lot of petitions over the years we are still stuck with massive sales of fireworks for two days before the 5th of November followed by about two or three months of firework shenanigans right through November, December. Christmas Eve and Christmas Night are now seen as a great occasion to entertain the neighbourhood with fireworks saved up from 5th November, then New Year's Eve and thereafter any family, wedding, birthday party etc uses up the rest of the 'crackers'.
When I was a child we had strings of crackers which made a bit of a bang, sparklers, jumping jacks and pretty 'cascade' things in many colours. Nowadays every cascady thing has a bang in it's tail. Basically they sound like a .22 rifle going off. Right at this moment they are raining down on my house from three 'rich' wan.....@*#s who live in my street. They must be rich because they can waste the equivalent of three square meals a day for a year for a starving child of the world just to give themselves a buzz. If I have to tolerate this I would be pleased if they had to sign up to pay the same to Volunteer Services Abroad or an International Famine project in order to purchase the fireworks.
Makes me sound like a spoilsport and a nasty bitter old woman and that is pretty much how I feel at this time of year. I had hardly any sleep last night because of the fireworks, I will not get much tonight and probably not a lot next Friday, Saturday and Sunday either as people 'choose' their Guy Fawkes Party Night. I live in a war zone. I have two goats ready to kid. One who has kidded and has a tiny baby. My Donkey is unsafe in his road frontage paddock so I leave him in the safest space but he really wants to go back to his usual night place so he gets agitated. The cow only calved a fortnight ago and is coming into milk beautifully - but tonight by 6p.m. when I did the night milking she was already uptight and pacing with the odd bang happening and withheld her milk by about two litres, and it has to come out so tomorrow morning her udder will be tight and sore and we will have a few words about emptying it, and chances are it will all happen again tomorrow night.
I have a cat who lives in the sheds, he is just a stray but he is a lovely boy, he will be very scared tonight. My four dogs have all had an extra walk tonight before Guy Fawkes time to empty their bladders and bowels. This took another hour out of my day, just so I know they will be as relaxed as they can be, locked in the house for the next few hours. Fae is just twelve months old and came from deep in the country so she has not had a Guy Fawkes before, but she seems to be coping. It is my SPCA special Beckiboo who really stresses and gets her homeopathic which does help but she is a nervous wreck right through November and almost unable to go for walks. I can't let her run free as she runs away - anywhere - and has been known to travel three ks in about twenty minutes. Each time she has been returned, except the year that she got under the bridge down in my swamp paddock and nobody new where she was, for days, till she decided she was safe and came crawling out. I had walked over that bridge ten times calling her name and shining the torch but she would not answer.
So yes, living in the peaceful countryside is a nightmare at Guy Fawkes. I suppose I should'nt care about my animals as much as I do. Maybe the people who are doing the fireworks think I am a nutter. Well the feeling is mutual. I simply do not understand the male desire to do this, especially as most of them are in their thirties and forties. You would think they had grown out of this stuff.
As I check out each household who overdoes the fireworks mania, I know I will never waste my money using their professional services or their businesses, knowing that that money will be used to terrorise my space for a portion of every year.
I currently have 37 ducklings - mostly muscovy - in various cages as they are all newborns. They don't worry about fireworks. I was doing my rounds tonight just on dark to check how and where everybody was and I found one of my ducklings wedged between a brick in a waterbowl and the side of the waterbowl with the waterlevel too low for him to get out. He was very wet and very cold and is now in my bra drying out and warming up and tickling quite a bit.
If it had not been Guy Fawkes I wouldn't have done that late round and duckling would have been very dead by the morning. So I think I will call him 'Guy' there has to be an upside to everything huh.
Raewyn Saville 5 November 2012
