Besieged By Bugs and Troubled by Termites. Last night I sat on a lounge under the dimmest light in the room, reading Systematic Theology. I kept being interrupted by the other occupants of the room, as they growled and swatted. We were under siege. Tens, possibility hundreds of bugs were climbing up the gauze of the door and pushing until they came through. Then they charged in and sashed themselves into our lights. The people sitting under the two brightest in the lounge room were showered with wings, wingless and dazed bugs, that found landing on people didn't make them any less dazed, they often ended up dead, or wingless. 

Bugs smashing into lights makes a sort of annoying noise.

Other invades found the crack below one of the gauze windows in the kitchen and came storming in. They bashed themselves into the big light in the kitchen. We left it on so they could die in there and I finally finished the chapter and got a flyswatter and waked most of the besiegers out into the other room. Were they continued to smash into the light and find ways to crawl inside and found some of their long dead grandfathers in the grave yard that is in there. Those who got in never returned and stayed to join their dead.

This morning the kitchen floor had masses of wings scattered under the light and a few wingless termiten attackers (termites) still crawled around, but were soon after squashed by huge feet as they moved about the kitchen. We had conquered.... until tonight I suppose.

Another totally different thing, which happened a while after I had got home from church. And after I had spent what seemed like a long time trying to out wit the ravens which were back again. but that is for another post, maybe when I finally work out what to do..... could be a long time. 

So..... I put the bread knife into into the nice soft loaf, I could almost taste it. As I cut myself a slice the knife grated against something. Black stuff appeared all over my slice I stared into the loaf. Something black poked out into my slice from where it had hidden itself inside our bread loaf. I pulled at it, it slid out. A piece of black plastic and a rusty screw? I inspected the bread maker, nothing seemed broken. Then I noticed the place where dried fruit can be put if one wants to make a fruit loaf, part of it hung at a wonky angle. The screw and plastic had fallen from there and got into my piece of bread! how dare they!

If you hadn't already gathered we make our own bread and according to every sensible person that has ever tried it, it tastes better (except for the screws) than any bought bread. (that they have tried)

Warning short rant coming up about, never mind, you can read it it you want to know.

Yes my last post was about giving thanks but, well this one isn't. That screen shot is just this months/last months stats. I have 4297 page views (through the life of my blog) but a lot of them would be from those nasty spam site  like; Vampirestat, adsensewatchdog, and all those referring sites that are not blogs or oneyearadventurenovel! I looked them all up this morning but not by clicking on those links! And all the rest were crawlers/bot and spam things.

Apparently clicking the links is exactly what they want you to do and there is no way to stop the bots/spam sites from linking to you and making a fake stat count. Unless you have a word press blog, but I shall not go over to the dark side ;) Annoyingly I have clicked on some of those links before, I shall not do it again! Hopefully that shall leave me alone. 

Well today is the first of November, so it is the beginning of the give thanks challenge!
The challenge is: think of seven things each day to thank God for, seven things each day for a month. I will be posting the things I am thankful for every now and then. Today is the first so...

thankyou God for:
~ The new month
~ The beauty of today’s sunrise
~ The way the morning sunlight shines through the gum leaves
~ The coolness of the morning
~ Your amazing grace
~ The sound of tiny little birds
~ My new camera and the photos I can take with it

and here are two photos of the beautiful, little birds

a young female Superb Fairy Wren

Male Superb Fairy Wren

Mud+ boys =  Muddy Boys

We had 26 mm of rain yesterday. It took most of the day to blow up but when it came it came! We hadn't have any rain for over a month and not much then. My little chickens had worked out how to get through the gate and out of the chook pen so I hoped they were all in there where they could get to shelter. I voiced my concerns to Mummy. She said "at least it's not hailing." I said "Don't say that." and then less than a minute later it started hailing... 

My sisters and I dragged the glass topped table under the carport and moved the car forwards. The wind blew hail right through the carport. Thunder roared and lighting flashed, rain pelted down onto the tin roof. I had to shout to be heard above the noise. We had already turned the computers off. The road outside had a white layer of bouncing rain and hail over it. The wind blew the rain into the windows. 

After one downpour had ceased Jane and I raced outside to lock up the chooks/chickens and the G-pigs. The two boys went out  to get wet. Very wet and covered in mud.

I also got a bit mud splattered. I don't see quite how playing in ^that^ is nice... but they had fun. Well I suppose I used to do that too, once. Well I know I did. At least in the puddle down there, well not in that puddle but the puddle that sits in that place whenever we have a considerable amount of rain.

I shall finish with saying praise God for the lovely rain and answered prayer! The plants really needed that.

My little fluffy chickens I got a while back are getting rather big. They are no longer living in the laundry which is good, because now I don't need to carry them outside every morning. I got a few bits of umm junk (wire, wood poles, wood sheet, tin sheet and some concrete strengthening stuff) and divided of a section of the chook yard. Then I let my little chooks out into the big world. They didn't go far. They did fly up into the tree and onto the old G-pig cage they are sleeping in now.

The chickens can actually fit through the junk fence but the big chooks can't. Aragana decided to go through it and got attacked by a huge brown butterfly! (Butterfly is the name of one of my big chooks) Aragana came back through the fence rather quickly and noisily. 

terrible photo but
you can see they are fighting

The chickens seemed to survive last nights drop in temperature. It has been so hot but got down to 2 or 4 degrees! Two of the chickens fight with each other..... sadly.... they are probably roosters. 

Yesterday they all fell asleep while I sat out there eating flies and reading..... systematic theology and yes twas me eating flies not the chickens. NEVER TRY IT TIS HORRID. Seriously horrid...    

They explored a bit further today, and love scratching holes in the ground.... all chooks seem to, nice holes to trip over in.

We are all ok now. We were ok but we were rather scared. Wait I shall start at the beginning. Mummy had gone into town. 

I lay on my bed reading systematic theology (suppose I shall have to get back to that soon) when Alice ran in. She started babbling unintelligible sentences. I caught a few words though; smoke, outside, where is Jane and boys. I got the last part, I had heard Jane and the boys in the granny flat (small house next to ours). Then what she said started to sink in and my heart started to race. A fire outside, smoke, not just little bits of smoke. I looked past the partially drawn curtains, clouds of white and blue smoke floated past. We ran to the lounge room, out the window were our trees and behind them smoke. 

The phone rang. Alice picked it up. Our neighbour two houses up and directly in the path of the smoke said something along the lines of. "Can you see the fire out there, we have called the fire brigade." and some other stuff. "And I think your mum is about to get home." Thank God! We were running to make sure the boys and Jane were where we thought they were when the car drove in. Mum had come back, but the fire still burned. 

 I'm just so glad Mummy got back when she did.  I got my camera.We got out hoses and joiners, then dragged the hose over the road and Mummy started to squirt the burning grass. Fire jeeps and fire trucks started arriving. The neighbours across from us all ready had a hose on the fire. 

Mummy the fire fighter

We could see the power line that had started it. Apparently the closest across the road neighbours had been talking on the phone when their power went out. They went outside and saw the fire as it started and called the fire brigade as well as the neighbours whose paddock the fire started in and whose house it now raced towards. 

The grass in that front paddock is mown so it only burned slowly (at least slowly for a grass fire). We eventually had about five big fire trucks and a few small Jeeps and lots of other cars, including the police and ambulance, there. A lot considering the amount of fires everywhere.

We found out that cockatoos had started the fire as I said in a previous post they chew on anything! And power lines are a sort of anything. The winds made the line snap but it wouldn't have is those cockatoos hadn't chewed it first.

Then Jane and I packed up the hoses, in the process we got our hands, arms and legs covered in ash. We put them back near the our power line that the birds like to sit on. The fire fighters walked around and managed to find the exact place the fire started! Then the man from the Argus turned up, rather too late. Now there are people outside replacing the power lines. 

After making the "Truth" wallpaper I decided to make two more that sort of go with it. I also made up the little verse things on these ones.

I only realized that my camera could take sepia photos yesterday. While I was reading a book (small and short) on macro photography that came with the camera. So naturally I had to try, that is one of the photos I took. 

The room was fairly dark and outside the sun shone making it extremely hot and bright. Long exposure and a steady hand and I got the photo. 

"The Way" photo is a shadow of a piece of paper on the road, no I did not get squashed by a car because I am here writing this. and now I think I am finished writing this.

One more thing, our family is on holidays (we are not doing any school) this week. Instead I am reading Systematic theology, and I'm really looking forward to today's forty three pages of it.... It's only one chapter.....

Hot winds come in from the west

Smokey haze across the sky

Obscuring the hills from view

Smoke stings torchering the eye

Heat beating down from the sun

Rippling up from the ground

Pressing, thickening the air

Heat coming from all around

The sun is now high over

Passing in its long slow arc

Billowing smoke in the south

Starting with only one spark

Black shadows start from nothing

Longer they begin to grow

Creeping along the dry ground

All movement seeming so slow

Will the heat ever decrease?

How long shall its presence stay?

Will it depart for the night

but to return the next day?

Wait

Is that the east wind stirring?

I shall ask for it to be

For the east wind brings coolness

Coolness drawn out of the sea

It brings up clouds from the east

To cover the sinking sun

It whispers amongst the trees

Just before the day is done

Along with it comes a smell

That sends all the frogs to sing

The hope and expectation

Of rain, that wondrous thing

The heat is gone for a time

For a while we are all-right

It is just that bit cooler

We have relief in the night

The moon is red from all the smoke in the air.
Red is the colour that gets past the smoke and reflects back from the moon.

I like birds, well most birds. I have been feuding with the Noisy Miner. The relationship I have to the Indian Myna ( not a native bird) is even worse. Indian Mynas are known for terrorising smaller birds and removing eggs from other native birds’ nests, if I see one I chuck anything available (except my camera) at it, sometimes I even hit them.  The Noisy Miner is native but the ones around our house will chase/attack any other birds. Hence we have no small birds here, on occasion we do see one flying for its life with a miner after it or really high up in big flocks. The Noisy Miner is also extremely noisy. If I walk near a tree with one it the racket begins until all the miners nearby are squawking. It is not a nice noise. If they happen to have a nest somewhere they dive bomb anyone who comes near as well as making an even louder noise than normal. Like some magpies do. On the subject of magpies we actually have really nice ones that never swoop at us. This is possibly because we feed them. 

Back to the miners. We have been enemies ever since I can remember. When my sisters and I were little we would sit for ages holding a rope. The rope lead to a stick that held up a basket and under it we put some birdseed. It worked. We caught quite a few that way..... and some other ways too. The Baby birds are quite fun. They are easy to catch for about a week after they leave the nest. The older ones also occasionally get stuck in the vegy garden, we have possibly frightened some of those to death. 

Now the part of the post I was trying to get to. On the west side of the house we have a line of ornamental plums and the miners like to sleep in them and as we found this morning, build nests in them. Now the story I wanted to tell, it took place last night.

Darkness surrounded the sleeping bird. A flash like lightning shone around, but the bird did not wake. Something scraped around under him, but he slept on.  Tentatively a hand reached out and stroked the bird’s tail. Fingers pressed together and pulled down. They pulled again and released. The birds head snapped up, it wondered what had disturbed it. Then the branch it sat upon started to swing from side to side. Something also pulled at his tail, in fact that was what made the branch swing so violently. Then the pulling and swinging stoped. The bird looked around, some unusual shape stood out against the light from the window of the house. The dark shape moved closer and “BOO”. If birds eyes could pop out his would have and if that bird ever had eyebrows they fell off then, just like he did. He fell from the branch, flapping wildly and made a zigzag path into the darkness narrowly missing the shed roof. 
Then as he dropped out of the sky, a fox came along and ate him all up. 

Doesn't that tail just say pull me? 

Well I added the last line on but the rest all happened, and I came back inside laughing. I seriously think that bird looked so surprised. I found it very amusing. No I did not feel sorry for the bird one bit. The miners also chase every other bird around here, even the wedge tailed eagles and my chooks! On the subject of wedgtails and miners:
An eagle soared through the sky followed by about five birds that looked tiny in comparison to his majestic frame. A flock of galahs flew over too. The eagle dived down a bit the little birds continued to pester him and some magpies joined them. Eyes narrowed he twisted back in the air and snatched at one of the little grey birds. His talons closed around flesh and feathers came spinning down from the blue sky. The eagle had the miner bird firmly in his grip. 

Probably shouldn't put 'cute' photos here if I want you not to like them.... 

Tis true and pretty interesting to watch. Both stories are true for the most part, I wrote them from memory so some small bits could be incorrect, but that is how I remember them. Obviously I couldn't write them while they happened..... I just hope that you don’t feel sorry for those nasty miner birds now.

On Sunday I had on a shirt that buttoned up and I got to thinking about the sided the buttons were on. I went and looked at the rest of my shirts and they all had the buttons on the left side and holes on the right, why? Then I had a look at my Dad’s shirts and they all had buttons on the right side, again why?

The most common theory I found is that wealthy people could afford clothing with buttons and could also afford servants. Males (according to this theory) dressed themselves. The buttons were on the right side to make it easier since most people are right handed. The women had maidservants to dress them and they would also be mostly right handed. Now it is still like that from tradition.

Then I wondered why people would want to make it easier for servants. Possibly so they could do buttons up faster. Then I thought, didn't some men also have servants to dress them. Possibly the above theory is correct, maybe not. 

More research

One really silly reason: Men had to be able to unbutton their coats with their right hand easily and quickly, when drawing swords and fighting??? They were fighting left handed?? No I don’t think so.

More research

New Theory: Female clothing becomes more masculine and eventually there was mostly no difference. There is a belief that wearing the clothing of the opposite sex is immoral. So there had to be some obvious way to tell the difference, volla buttons! 

Still don’t know for sure why but we do have buttons on different sides. The thing that surprises me is that I had never noticed until now. But others seem to be surprised that I noticed at all.

I wrote a poem the other day . It didn't really work. But I really liked two lines of it "His words are not just simply true they are truth itself". So I had to do something with them. I also took this photo yesterday ...I think. Tis very hard to catch birds in flight so I am really happy with this shot. BTW the bird is a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo.

I suppose the 'sulphur' part of; Sulphur Crested Cockatoo comes from sulphur being yellow. Other than that there are not many similarities. When Sulphur burns it emits a blue flame.... I have not tried burning Sulphur Crested Cockatoo (will henceforth refer to as SCC) but I do not think it will burn blue, more likely black. Sulphur melts at 115.2 °C... I think a SCC would cook but not melt. Molten Sulphur is red but as I said before I don't think a SCC would melt easily, twould be black. Sulphurs biggest use is in agriculture to give nutrients to plants, whereas a SCC destroys plants. They bite off small branches and ring bark big ones, so that in wind like we have been having recently they fall down. This sometimes leaves hollows that the SCC can nest in. SCC also seem to like to destroy sunflowers....we have even lost some we grew under netting. Sulphur is insoluble in water. In this case I think the SCC would drown. which would not be very nice, they are such beautiful if cheeky birds. Sulphur is used in concrete and asphalt.... well lets just say SCC is not. How in the world did I get to that?

Stop I put in a complaint! You can't do this to me!

An interesting thing about sulphur: In the 1800s, mothers in Britain often gave their children a spoonful of sulphur and molasses as a spring tonic. Apparently it isn't poisonous....still. Eating a SCC might me.... Indigenous Australians could have though.....

I do not see why they should be called Sulphur Crested Cockatoos. Why not Banana Cockatoos? Then you only need to write two words, but of course three things look better to the eye. So it could be Banana Top Cockatoos. Their crests are shaped and coloured like a banana. Or Lemon Crested Cockatoos...or... id better stop this could get crazy.

Sulphur Crested Cockatoos are meant to eat; berries, seeds, nuts, bark and roots, they also seem to want to eat other things too. At least the SCC chew on other things like; bird feeders, gutters, rocks (yes they are strange birds), wires and probably anything else that is slightly edible looking (or that people would find it annoying to have chewed on). Sometimes a large flock of them will settle all over a tree, and make it look as if white flowers had just blossomed. Really what is happening is things are being destroyed. If one walks underneath a tree covered in SCC you instantly become a target, twigs, nuts, bark and other things will probably start falling on and all around you.

Apparently female SCC can be told apart from males because the females have red-brown eyes and the males have darker brown eyes. I must have only ever got close to male birds though, their eyes look black to me. So basically the male and female birds can't be told apart. 

And this was meant to be a short post...... I think I got rather carried away. Their eyes do look black!

You may have seen the links I have to the KBR website on the side bar or maybe not. They publish a really nice, encouraging magazine for young ladies. (Which I highly recommend)  they also have a free wallpaper each month. They are based in America, so get the seasons all wrong.

But to the actual point of this post. They have different challenges at times and this one is a giving thanks one. Hopefully you could tell that by the picture. They did one before which I attempted to do but we went on holidays in the middle of and I forgot some days. This time I will hopefully remember. It is good to give thanks for everything and this challenge is a great way to do it. Hey God gave us everything so thinking of seven things a day for a month can't be too hard. Yes I failed last time but that was not for lack of things to be thankful for!

For more information follow the link on the picture which may or may not have worked or this one. Or you could click this one and follow a link from there.

And not the photo is not my photo, it is their photo,it is also a nice looking photo/photos. It would be rather strange to just find words hanging around to take photos of. 

Psalm 119:164

Seven times a day I praise you

    for your righteous rules.

1 Chronicles 16:34

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever!

Psalm 9:1

I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.

I didn't know where my watch had got to yet again. "Jane what time is it?" Jane looks at the clock on the wall. "About six forty." Actually the clock had stopped then and the real time would have been a bit later. We only realized that at about seven fifty when we looked at the clock again and... "What? It can't be only that  time!" It wasn't. Jane got the clock down from the wall, set it to the right time and it started working again. We didn’t have to change the battery or anything. The clock still told the right time later, so all seemed ok. But of course I wouldn’t have done a post about something that boring.  What happened next made it much more interesting. A loud “Crash” came from the other room, glass splintered and spun across the floor.  (That is rather interesting).

 I ran into the other room.... well if you can call three fast steps running, and I actually only poked my head around the door, as the floor had pieces of sparkling glass all over it. The clock had stopped, well it still ticked, Note: ticking clocks are evil. It had stopped between the wall and the side board. 

Mummy and I swept all the glass dust into a pile and got rid of it. By glass dust I mean glass dust, that is how small a lot of the pieces were. But not quite all of it went in the bin, yet. I realized my luck in finding such an interesting photo subject.

I was supposed to put it all in the bin when I had finished taking photos but well........ The rest of the glass came out so easily.  The clock is now back on the wall, without any glass. 

And now for something else that has no relation to the above, except that it actually was doing what I wanted at the time of the incident above mentioned. 

Hmm where do I start?
Well the computer I use for everything (we have two and now two laptops as well, one of which is daddy’s work computer) has been playing up and going slower and slower. At least it hasn’t been so noisy since I vacuumed the dust out of it the other day.... 

No I shall start again.

It has not been hot today which is so different to yesterday. ( Ok that doesn’t even appear to be about computers, but it shall lead to them, be patient.) Yesterday there were wind speeds of sixty to eighty km/ph. It got rather hot. I had thought the wind was nice as it kept the air moving, but after church we got home and the computers had switched themselves off. We turned the air con on. We had a grey out. We turned the air con again. We had another grey out.... we didn’t turn the air con back on..... Computers stayed off.... eventually we stopped having grey outs and turned the air con and later computers back on. Twas late by that time. Then came the lightning..........

The clock incident happened this morning but I have been doing school work. Also the computer keeps crashing because some backup things are corrupted or something like that. Or the backup things are corrupted because the computer is dying anyway, or they aren’t related. I have had to restart the computer three times! And it takes ages to reconnect to the other computer (on which all our files are stored) and to the Internet   Just to make me happy the other computer just decided it would play up too.....well soon I may have to say R.I.P to my Rather Irritating PC. 
Tis a lesson in patience or tolerance..... but of course, “I hate waiting”. Actually that is the best thing about the computer playing up.... I get to say, “I hate waiting” which I really like saying!

I finished reading ‘Amedeo: The True Story of an Italian’s War in Abyssinia’ yesterday. It is a really interesting book. I had always wanted to read a book on one of the world wars written by a German. Well Amedeo wasn’t a German he was Italian, but the Italians were fighting with the Germans. Maybe more correctly they were fighting against the British. The Germans never actually gave the support they had promised, and in the end the Germans invaded Italy. Nevertheless Amedeo fought against the British and it strange knowing that in the end, the British would win. 

The book tells of all the things Amedeo did in world war two and before that in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and the Spanish Civil War. Amedeo went by a lot of different names had great qualities of leadership, strategy and courage. He and others in the book would do everything they could for their king and country, even if they didn’t believe themselves in what they were doing.

 Amedeo also disguised himself many times and got away with it. The book definitely confused me at times though, with all the political talk and information about important people and all those impossible to pronounce names. But on the whole I enjoyed it.  Tis amazing to think Amedeo really did all that. 

SPOILER

Well sorta a spoiler

Warning Spoiler

that sounds really silly.... well a spoiler is on the way....

And that he survived it all and only died in 2010 eight years after the book got published. I was also glad that in the end Beatrice and Amedeo did get married.  She had waited so long, and with the knowledge that Amedeo could be dead. There were also parts I found very funny, like when Amedeo is asked if he has seen well himself...... and when he meets people after the war, who had tried to kill him.  

Now I won’t say anything else because if any people who read this are at all like me they will look at the spoiler warning and go “I must read this, because it is a spoiler. And someone put it there, so I will read it.” Or something like that. 

How I actually came to writing this: Well last night we watched a movie and went to bed some time before 11. I was trying to sleep and thinking over the day, I remembered reading the book and started writing a report in my head. I’m sure I said more than I have here but I just can’t remember what else. I didn’t write it down.... As I have said before, bed is the best place for ideas. By the time I finished thinking it was sometime after 11.... Anyway I think it is a really interesting book.

I just realized I forgot to say who the author is, how silly of me....... Tis Amedeo: The True Story of an Italian’s War in Abyssinia by Sebastian O’Kelly. Actually I realized it is on the photos....

I just realized I hadn’t done a post on my new camera! I bought if off eBay and it arrived a week ago. It has a normal and a zoom lens. The best thing is, all the settings that I can change manually. I have been having heaps of fun changing settings. The zoom lens is really good too. I got some fairly close photos of the eagle chick I first found on My Uneventful Walk.  Birds seem to grow up so fast. I have to climb about half way down the cliff to be level with it.  In case you were wondering the camera is a cannon EOS 600D. The screen can come out and swivel around which is quite useful at times. 

On the same photography talk.... I got the Champion Junior Photographic exhibit at the annual show. And a number of other places and HCs. Hopefully I can take more great shots with this camera too!

The stray dog that we found yesterday seemed so sad. So scared, and worried that we would hit her.  I wondered where she came from and what will happen to her next. Obviously this is from my imagination but it could be true. 

The Sparkle of Hope

What is going to happen to me now? Only a few months ago I’d spend the days out in the paddocks. I would help my master with the cows and when I finished that I’d go chasing after the kangaroos and rabbits. At night I would lie in my nice dry kennel outside the fence that my master lived inside. 

Then some of the cows were taken away. One evening my master took some bottles out into the paddock, he drank them. They smelled foul. On the way home he yelled at me and gave me a kick when I came too close. Within a few weeks the rest of the cows were taken. My master took me away from the farm. There were no cows here, though somewhere in the distance I could smell and occasionally hear them, when the wind blew just right. 

I lived inside his new fence other fences were all around each had its own dog in it. The clatter of bottles still came from this new house. The door banged and my master came stumbling out. I looked around to see if I could see anyone who had hurt him. There was no one.  Something hit my side and booted me onto the grass, bottles smashed. The smell of those bottles hung in the air and clung to my masters clothes. I got to my feet. 

A whimper escaped from my mouth and I cringed backwards as masters foot came towards me. Again I fell.  It happened most nights. Whenever my master actually remembered to bring me any food he would give me a kick along with it.  I worried about my master, something in him had changed. Then he brought out the gun. Memories of his praise when I caught a young rabbit stirred in my mind. I remembered the huge hare I had flushed out of the wild olive bushes and how he had shot it. This time the gun levelled at me. I just stood there, until the shot whipped past just over my back. If I’d leaped into the air sooner it would have hit me. Now I turned and ran tail between my legs. 

Over the fence and along the road I streaked. Dogs in the other pens growled and barked. Through a gap between fences, I kept running, towards the smell of cows. I blundered through another fence. My feet slid from under me and I fell into the muddy bottom of a creek. I ran on. Around a small shed I came to a tangle of grass and bushes. Panting I slunk into them and lay down. 

Sunlight tickled my eyelids. I woke.  Footsteps came close and receded, I lay flat to the ground, still. Later I ventured out, but a door opened and a girl came out, she looked straight at me. I ran back into the grass. The girl followed me and brought a rope and another girl. They tied the rope around my neck, they didn’t hit or shout. 

The rope tugged pulling me forwards. My collar started to slip forwards, they looped another end of rope around my neck. Another girl had a strange black thing hanging from her neck, which she had pointed at me, I tensed, I tried to hide behind the girl with the rope, nothing happened, except a clicking noise. More people appeared and we all set off walking up a road. I sensed we were heading away from the cows, towards my master. I kept my tail between my legs, glancing over my shoulder I wondered how far away the cows were. Where had our cows gone? 

One of the bigger people occasionally went off the road and up smaller roads and through gates to more of the brick buildings. Then we turned and headed back, I jogged along in front of the girl who held the rope, instead of dawdling behind. Back through the gate and to a post where the big person put a loop of the rope around it. The girl with the black thing on her neck brought a container.  I found she points the black thing at the people too. The rope girl filled it with water and placed it near me. 

The sun grew hotter, I barked, my skin prickled in the heat. I continued barking. The big person moved me to a different post in the shade. The day wore on. I watched the people moving about two of them left and the other seven waved. Some of them left and came back again. The one with the black thing around her neck came towards me. She rubbed my ears. The also gave me some food, I waited for them to kick me. They didn’t.  The girl with the black thing walked up the road and came back with a basket of oval objects that looked like eggs. She walked past me and into the building, as if I hadn’t been there. Maybe I wasn’t there. Maybe this is a dream; maybe my master really did beat me so much that I don’t know what is going on.  Maybe he never beat me, but I can feel the pain in my ribs and the place on my back where the bullet grazed my fur. 

The sky darkened, clouds crept up from the east. The sun sank below the horizon.  Head on paws, I slept again buffeted by the winds of the night.  

The sun rose on yet another day, slowly warming me, from the outside in. Footsteps, I looked up, the person with the black thing around her neck. She pointed it at me again. It clicked a few times then she scratched my ears. I rolled over her foot came towards me. To kick me, what had I done? I leaped up and backed away as far as the rope would allow. She didn’t kick though. The girl stretched out her hands to scratch me. She talked to me and rubbed my ears like my master used to do, a long time ago. More clicking of the black thing then with a final scratch she left. 

A Ute came roaring down the road, a dog in the back barked. It had black fur with white markings, just like me and the Ute looked like my masters. I trembled all over, would he find me? But what was he doing with that other dog going towards the cows? Was that other dog me? Was I someone else, is that what had happened? I barked at the other dog, he barked back. 

 The girl came again and pointed the black thing at me, I wagged my tail. Later a car turned in the driveway and parked next to me. A lady got out. The people from the house came out and they talked. The lady ran a smooth round object with a handle over me and shook her head. Another cord around my neck, then the lady took the rope off.  She led me to the back of her car. She motioned for me to jump up, just like my master used to, before his heart went bad. 

I measured the distance with my paws, backed up and sprang into the air. I landed nicely. Then I noticed the cage, the lady pushed me in it smelt strange. I turned around, but the lady lifted me a bit and shoved me gently but firmly in. She slipped the cord from my neck and the cage door clanged shut. 

“There has been one report of a missing dog, we will see if it is her, If not she will go to the pound. They should be able to find a home for her. She looks to be a very friendly dog when she is not so scared.  Just a little while ago we had another kelpie cross and she got snapped up almost straight away.”

What would happen now? I do not know, but I hope it shall be something better. With a nice family or back out on a farm, with some cows. As I left I wondered if the girl with the black thing around her neck saw the sparkle in my eyes, the sparkle of hope.