Burnt Offerings

Since the veldt has been burnt, there is not much food to sustain the wildlife. Okay the guineafowls and the occasional scavenger can find some burnt offerings such as dead insects or any carcases of crawling animals that could not get out of the way of the flames quick enough. 

Hungry birds have been flocking to my garden looking food, so out comes the apples and seeds just to help them through this brunt spot.

Whats left?

I am struggling to get on top of this man flu. I feel well till about mid afternoon when it hits me again. I think it is about this time that the meds wear off and since I don't want to overdose I have to wait till evening to take some more.

Today at lunchtime, I decided to go take a cat nap and hopefully feel right as rain. I had just put my head on the pillow and closed my eyes when I heard someone drilling. What?

No one should be home, unless my tenant is home and drilling but why should she? So annoyed, I sat up and was about to go investigate the source of the sound which would not allow me to even have a cat nap, when I heard the noise coming from my feet. There was Rosy holding onto a dove about the same size by the throat and the drilling noise was her growing to warn all the other cats who had circled her to back off.

By the time I got her to release the poor dove, there was nothing I could do but discard of the remains. Naughty kitty. I suppose this is how I feel, just a bunch of feathers, that is all, just a memory of myself.

Beauty in Pain

I am not sure why, but I have a persistent headache that started in the early hours of the morning and just won’t go away. So here I sit at work trying to concentrate with a dull pain in the background.

Dealing with spam referrals in our analytical data is not helping the matter much, but somehow I am getting on top of these analytical statistics. I close my eyes and behind my left eye a throbbing pain comes to the fore. Today is not my day and when I finally open my eyes these three feathers on my desk come to focus. Ah beauty in this painful moment.

Quiet before the Storm

It seems that South Africa is becoming even crazier with the polarisation of the Rainbow Nation. We seem to be in an economic tail spin as we head closer to elections later this year.

To me it is back to work with a shaking head, as I cry for the beloved country. At work it is all quiet, peaceful with all the peacock cries of last year that have subsided and we are left with just mother hens nesting and fathers protecting. Soon the young ones will start to arrive and that is something better to watch out for than the wretched humans throwing sticks and stones. Quiet before the storm.

"I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another." - All Quiet on the Western Front.

Here Kitty

With all the fuss and excitement of yesterday evening, today turned out to be a slow day at home. Mind you, slow in a nice way. Relaxing and rejuvenating. Now just to get the cat away from lying in front of the TV. Ahhh a feather will do, here kitty.

All Quiet on the Western Front

On a beautiful pre winter’s day, load-shedding well under way here, there, and well just about everywhere in South Africa,

I sit in my very quiet office. Listen I can just hear the wind in the trees over the distant hum of the diesel generator. And that “report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.”

I had fallen forward, head lay on my desk as if I am sleeping. Listen? Listen no birds, only the wind carrying that dull hum of motor making electricity.

“We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial, I believe we are lost.” I close my eyes.

Yay Friday

Friday couldn't have come any sooner as this week has been long and very busy with trips to the vet twice every day and half staffed at work. Time didn't stand still as two of my idols were taken from us. Leonard Nimoy was beamed up and yesterday Terry Pratchett took Death's arm as he went for his appointment in Samarra.

If was difficult to find time to take photos yet there was opportunities all around but the time thieves were out and about. Take this small peacock feather just lying on the grass crying out "Pick me! Pick me!" yet I didn't have a strawberry handy for the tortoise.

"There is no doubt that being human is incredibly difficult and cannot be mastered in one lifetime." - Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

Feathers Flock Together

I have a pheasant and a guineafowl feather that have been sitting on my desk for some time know. It is meant for my collection of feathers at home but somehow these two just don’t make it. So today as a reminder to take them home they became the featured blog photograph. Although worlds apart, one from south-east Asia and the other sub-saharan Africa, to me they sort of blend in and meant to be together. One feather in the cap, and one feather to tickle.

Pens and Feathers holders