Cat Trap

 

There are a lot of feral cats in New Zealand. Our farm has more than its share. As you know, I am a cat lover and I hate to see these scrawny animals slinking around unloved, unfed, and alone.

So when I found a wee gray kitten scarfing down the premium cat food from Smudge’s bowl, I tried – in vain – to make a friend and thereby adopt a second cat. Smudge was not in favor of this and made her obligatory hissing noises while standing at attention as the kitten eyed her nervously.

Well, the kitten hung out with us for a few hours and then disappeared. I saw it again near the barn and tried again to make friends. No deal! So I went to Dan. He knew of an extremely expensive cat trap that would humanely trap the cat thus enabling me to perhaps tame the kitten. At worst it would help us corral the other feral cats and get them off the farm. And, yes, I did have a plan for their removal. I was going to drive them to the SPCA and they could try to find homes for them.

I don’t know if the plan would have worked or not. I never had the chance to find out. As you can see by the picture, the “cat” trap only trapped rats. So far we have gotten 5 rats in 5 days. Can’t do better than that! We are ecstatic here. We’ll trade feral cats for disgusting rats any day.

 

By the way, this picture of Smudge is while she is watching the rat in a trap which is located just underneath the window of my grandson’s bedroom. This window is next to the pipe that leads  up to my rooms. Perhaps now the rat convention in the eaves over my head will stop. I can only hope – and rebait the trap.

Eggs. Eggs. Eggs

 

When I was younger – much, much younger – I thought  all eggs were clear whites and pale yellow yolks. When I got to New Zealand I was thrown by all these bright, bright yellow scrambled eggs. Little did I know that eggs were supposed to look that way.

I present to you one of the 7 or so eggs we get each day from our totally chilled chickens. They scratch happily around the paddocks after their morning feed of horrendously expensive seeds, have a morning tea break of our breakfast scraps (without egg bits; might have been a relative), an afternoon tea of more scraps and then a night feed of more seeds.

This keeps them near home, docile (no pecking or scratching at me) and producing wonderful eggs. And therein lies the problem. They keep on laying; day after day after day. I don’t much like eggs and won’t eat more than 2 a week, add about 4 for baking and I only consume about a day’s worth of production. What do we do with the other 6 days at an average 7 eggs a day? We try to feed them to the kids.

This hasn’t worked out too well. They are up to their eyeballs in eggs and have staged a mass revolt. What do you do when a 1 year old, a 3 year old, and a 5 year old revolt? Not too much. Remember, these ages are not known for their rational interchanges. Pretty much they stick to the basics.

“NO!”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I want something else.”

“NO!”

Yael and Dan try to eat their share and more but we are still left with several dozen a week. We can’t sell them; legal constraints. We can’t eat them. None of us can stomach even the thought of yet another egg salad lunch. So we give them away.  Now these are great eggs from great chickens. Organic feed, no supplements, no hormones, no additives. Just great  eggs. And they are free! So why have our friends started edging away as we come up with yet another carton of eggs? I don’t know. If I can ever catch up with them, I’ll ask them.