fishydreams

Talk to anyone about keeping poultry and you will get a familiar sad tale. These stories (and I have heard quite a few now) follow the same course and it is only the details that differ. Let me give you the general story, although you almost certainly know it already. The alternative points of detail have been put into brackets as an indication of how individual accounts vary one from the other, but the basic story is ALWAYS the same.

Here´s how it goes:

“Once I used to keep a load of (hens/ducks/geese or some combination thereof). Then one night a (fox/wild dog/leopard/alligator/boa constrictor) broke into the enclosure AND KILLED EVERY GODDAM SINGLE ONE OF THEM.” Continue reading →

The other day I was walking along a quiet road in the campo with my two dogs when we came across a snake. This was at around nine in the morning and the snake was sunning itself on the road. At first I thought it was a stick because it was lying quite still. As I got a little closer the “stick” transformed itself, developing a scaly skin and and a narrow flickering tongue. Continue reading →

Every now and then you feel as though you are invited by nature to observe an event or a behaviour which normally goes unobserved and it invariably comes as an unexpected treat. This happened to me on the river about three weeks ago when the gypsy barbel were so preoccupied with feeding in broad daylight that, when silently approached, I was permitted to see them from very close. I made a film of them but for reasons I do not fully understand, I am unable to load it up on to the blog. Continue reading →