A PLEASANT PHEASANT

And so we come to the end of another week. And – as per bloody usual – it has been a week jam-packed with jollity and… ummm not so jollity.

My dear Olivia was not very well earlier in the week, which is why I am sitting in her amanuensis chair taking dictations on this jolly Friday morning. Our Lady Selene is high in the sky at the moment, which means that there is not much to choose between me and the orange cat for functional life skills, but one does ones best to carry on.

One piece of sad, but not altogether unexpected, news is that when Graham went to feed the birds in the top aviary yesterday, he found the cock Lady Amherst’s pheasant, who had been living there for the past ten years, dead in his shelter. He was very old, having bucked the trend for pheasant longevity by several years, and had been getting more and more decrepit over the last 12 months. However, I am very glad that he died in his own house. Rather than spending his final hours crammed into a cat basket and driven down a bumpy road to Bradworthy, having to sit in a crowded waiting room in which the other animals – mostly dogs and cats – would be giving off sounds and smells; undoubtedly terrifying for him, before being taken into a room that smells of chemicals and given a lethal injection.

He was a bad tempered bugger, especially towards visiting males of any species. And especially in the breeding season, he would get very aggressive towards Graham when he went in to feed him or clean the aviary out. In the end he resorted to carrying a broom with which to fend him off. However, when it came to the female of the human race, it was an entirely different story. Any girl or woman of child bearing age who walked past the aviary during the pheasant breeding season would be rewarded by an impressive display of strutting and cooing, as the pheasant marched up and down with his chest out, obviously doing his best to persuade the female visitor to be the mother of the chicks. He was certainly a character amongst gallinaceous fowl, and although he lived a long and pugnacious life without any major illnesses or injuries, he will be very sadly missed.

Forgive me for always banging on about our webTV show, but it matters a lot to me, and I would be grateful for as many people as possible to see it, and spread the tidings of it far and wide:

EP 84