Yawo!

Grandma, Great-Grandma, Great-great-Grandma, Mum, Sissy, Aunty, Ina passed away peacefully late on 24 October.

Mum

In the afternoon of 16 August, I was seized by a bizarre sensation that Mum was going to die.  I tried to ignore the suffocating grip, like a coat of armour, of feeling, knowing, understanding Mum was going to die.

     I panicked.  I love my Mum.  She can’t die. What would I do without her?

     Over the next couple of hours I came to accept that, at almost 73, having had a major stroke and four mini-strokes, Mum, at some point, will die.  Whether it’s sooner or later, the natural order is she goes before me.  I told myself to get a grip and make the most of the remaining time I have with her.

     The following morning, I left Tony and the kids and slipped out to have breakfast with Mum.  The next day after school, the kids and I went round for a cup of tea.  Seffy and Kibby took the opportunity to watch TV.  We called in the next day and the next.  The knowledge that Mum was going to die hung over me like a monsoonal sky.

     After school on Thursday afternoon I was writing my report to the classroom teacher and Tony rang with the strangest of news.  Mum had had some shoulder pain and went for an ECG which had come back clear yesterday.  She then had a CT scan and Ann-Maree had just called Tony with the results.

     “Mum’s lungs are full of shadows,” he said.  “It’s cancer.  She’s full of it.”

     “What?”  I wasn’t following his words.  Mum was at home and we were about to visit her.

     “The pain she’s had in her shoulder for months isn’t her heart.  Her heart’s fine.  It’s cancer.  It’s in her lungs.”

     “Are we talking about your Mum?”

     Mum, Ina had cancer.  From Tony’s tone, it wasn’t good.  Obviously I have a limited understanding of cancer, but shadows in the lungs suggest secondaries.  That’s not good.  

     It had never occurred to me Ina would die.  She might be close to 87, but she has always been there for us. We lived with her for 20 years. She survived a triple bypass so she'd keep on living.  She is in Cairns.  We are close to Cairns.  She can't die.  She is the backbone of the Titasey family.  We are the ribs that only exist because of her.  These thoughts gusted through my mind.

     It wasn’t my mum I needed to worry about. I went straight home, my gut full of cold, wet rain, and told Tony my feeling about Mum.

    “It’s my mum you were thinking about," he said.

Grandmother and grandaughter

Ode to a toad

I’ve a clumsy hop and a heavy girth
I’m without a trace of beauty
One glance at me
Has all and sundry
Believing my death is their duty.

I can’t help my brown and warty skin
Nor my bulbous eyes set far apart
But my stocky build
Is generously filled
With a gentle albeit lonely heart.

I was imported to eat cane beetles
Scientists’ hopes were naturally high
The beetle flew
I’d nought to do
But go forth and multiply.

I am prey to native fauna
For I am slow and ideally sized
But threatened I secrete
Poison predators eat
Sadly this has seen them well demised.

I am collateral damage
Of an ill-planned experiment
I'm much maligned
By souls unkind
Who punish me with contempt.

I am speared, I’m drowned, I’m clubbed at night
I am doused in toxic Dettol
I’ve no defence
Considered pestilence
For reasons beyond my control.

Since I’m an innocent victim

Of science meddling in Nature’s way
Promise when we meet
You will let me greet
The morning light of another day.

Luck

I haven’t a job nor career.
Finances are tighter than ever.

Both fridges died on the day of the lunar eclipse.

Our house needs some major repairs.

My arthritic toe is killing me.

Luck
by Dorothea Mackellar

I wasn’t born (said the Seventh Son)
Sucking a silver spoon,
But I saw black swans the other night
Flying across the moon,
At dusk, on a rising moon.

I haven’t been lucky in love (he said)
Nor picked up a sixpence yet,
but I found the place where the seagulls sleep,
After the sun is set:
White drifts when the sun is set.

Though I missed some concerts and comedies
And balls in the usual way,
I’ve come on a mother platypus
With her babies out at play,
Velvety twins at play.

I wasn’t born (said the Seventh Son)
With a silver spoon to suck,
Nor bowled to church in a limousine,
But my christening brought me luck.
There are several sorts of luck.

But I know the unquestioning loyalty of an orange-footed swan (quack!).

I have witnessed battery hens tasting freedom for the first time.

At dawn I am roused by the pan flute-call of a pied butcher bird.

And I have the love of a good man.

There are several sorts of luck.

You can never be lonely with a dog and a book!

Saving six hens

At the hardware store I told the friendly assistant, Annie, about my brilliant, but naughty duck.  Annie was a chook person.  I like chook people.  They are kindred spirits.

     Annie and I chatted about our poultry, their antics and I mentioned I was going to the Yungaburra markets to buy chooks.  She told me she buys her chooks from an egg farm not farm from Atherton.  She explained that there are two types of hens for sale.  Point of lay girls at the beginning of their laying careers for $22 or year old ladies for $4. 

     Immediately, I knew I would rescue four old ones and give them a loving and hopefully longer life.

Apart from dishevilled tail feathers, some bare breasts and a fear of open space and probably deep-seated anxieties, the six girls weren't in bad shape.

     ‘Be careful,’ Annie warned, ‘they’ll probably be missing feathers and they won’t be able to walk cos they’ve been standing in wire cages for a year and they’re not used to walking.’  She saw my face drop.  ‘It’s okay.  They come good after a while.’

     ‘But what’s with the missing feathers?’

     ‘They get bored and peck at each other in the cages.  And they can be a bit nasty so you have to watch them and maybe separate them from each other for a while.’  She sensed my despair.  ‘I never go in to the shed where the cages are cos I can’t bear to see them.  I get my husband to go.’

     By then, all I was concerned about was rescuing not four, but six chooks.  And by God I hope I wasn’t exceeding the maximum limit of household hens as decreed by the Tablelands Regional Council.

     I announced to Tony that we were not going to Yungaburra markets to support local growers and artisans by buying their fresh produce and wares and coffee and treats and four Isa Brown chooks.  We were going the other way to rescue six battery hens (another day and it would have been eight).  To my complete surprise he agreed and got the dog and cat crates filled with hay and loaded them into the Prado.
     I decided, like Annie, I couldn’t bear to see the imprisoned hens, their feet curling unnaturally around the wire, the artificial lighting to stimulate perpetual day time, their red, featherless skin and stumpy beaks, their agitation and mental and physical trauma.

     On the drive out I realised by not confronting the horror of battery farming (thanks to campaigns by animal welfare organisation groups designed to shock viewers and readers), I’d be turning a blind eye to what was happening. I needed to see the reality before having an informed opinion.  
     I was in for a shock.

     Firstly, I was taken aback by the simplicity of both the owners’ house and the old, naturally ventilated and unlit shed that contained rows of caged chooks.  I had expected a huge, air-conditioned building that housed the hens under fluorescent lighting.  
     Clearly there wasn’t a lot of money in caged egg production.

     Then I met one of the owners.  She was a softly-spoken older woman.  Her slim frame was bent over a conveyor belt that sorted the eggs into weights complete with an infrared light to detect any blood spots or other abnormalities in the eggs.

     She had the weariness of someone who’d probably never had a day off because running a family business didn’t allow such a luxury.  I wondered if caged-egg farming wasn’t tough on only the hens.

     ‘How many eggs to you sort a day?’ I asked, amazed by what seemed like thousands of eggs stacked in trays of 30.

     ‘About 5000.’

     ‘How long have you been doing this?’ said Tony.

     ‘Oh, about thirty years.’
     We chatted a bit about what was involved egg farming.  This gentlewoman had a resigned expression as she talked and expertly felt the eggs, examined the shells and placed them on the belt.  I considered retirement village advertisements in glossy magazines and on billboards and the images of similarly-aged people; a couple walking along a beach,  a party playing a round of golf and a husband handing a wife a glass of something at sunset overlooking a scene in nature.  I've never seen an image of a woman working laboriously over a machine.
     My compassion radar was beeping furiously.

     ‘Do you ever need casual help?’  I was thinking of a job for Sutchy over the Christmas holidays and cheap, hard-working labour for the woman.

     ‘We used to,’ she said with a sigh, ‘but there’s not enough money in it.  Just the family that does the work now.’

     There is always a human side to an issue.  Suddenly, the whole caged-egg debate took on another perspective.  
     It’s easy to sit at home and criticise battery farms.  But  consumers want eggs, and lots of them, in a steady, endless supply.  And they won't get them from happy hens, scratching the grounds of sunlit coops with spacious laying bays full of locally grown hay.

     I recall the late nineties when the caged-egg criticisms began to surface.  At first I was shocked and initially critical of the harsh practice till I read an article about the perils of free-range egg farming.  Those so-called humane practices weren’t all they were cracked up to be.  I remember the crux of the article – when a lot of laying hens are put together in a free-range context, bad stuff happens between hens like bullying and attacks.  And it's harder to keep predators out.

     Soon after, Tony and I air-freighted 9 gorgeous Sussex-cross hens and one very handsome Sussex rooster to TI.  This was early 2000 and for the next 13 years we acquired different hens and roosters as people left and we almost always had our own supply of happy eggs.

     My visit to the egg farm reminded me of the problems with free-range chooks and prompted me to do a little research.  We know battery farming is cruel, but I've been surprised by the lack of information for consumers about the problems with free-range egg production.  This SMH article explains some of the problems.
     Some good news!  Coles, Woolies and McDonalds have vowed to phase out caged eggs over the next couple of years.  But are consumers prepared to accept what comes with cage-free eggs - inconsistent production, bullying between chooks, more pests and disease, attacks by snakes and foxes and higher-prices.  And don't think claims of 'free-range' claims are always true.  Recently the Federal Court fined a company $300,000 after it falsely labelled eggs as 'free-range.'

     I do not agree with caged eggs and the idea floated in the industry of compensating battery-egg farmers to move to free-range production is a start.  But I don't agree with mass production of free-range eggs so consumers can feel smug about the rights of animals being met even though there is evidence free-range farming isn't that great and that the egg industry can mislead consumers about free-range production.
     Neither form of egg production is fair to the 11 or so million chooks kept for egg farming (ABS).  
     People can easily become proactive when consuming eggs by either purchasing fewer eggs, having their own 'happy' hens or buying from backyard chook owners or small-scale farmers selling at markets.  Those options are restrictive to humans, but fairer to hens. 
     We live in a society where most consumers have no involvement in the food production process, but have great demands driven by their desires and tastes, no doubt fuelled by cooking magazines and shows like MKR and MasterChef.  
     Habits are hard to break, but at the end of the day, the fate of markets like the caged-egg/free-range egg farming is in the hands of consumers.  A bit of awareness about the plight of the birds and the alternatives to mass egg farming (battery or free-range) will ensure the hens are treated fairly ... like six old chooks who are now struggling to come to terms with a bit more room to move at 8 Second Avenue in Atherton!

Naughty, knowing Pepper

Yesterday we had planned to visit the Yungaburra markets and buy four chooks, Isa Browns. Tony has been doing some fowl research and apparently, Isa Browns are the latest in backyard chooks.  And we reckon no back yard is complete without 'happy' chooks.

     However, Pepper inadvertently took us on a different path all because, being exceptionally clever and curious, she went investigating in the yard behind ours. She has been going walkabout to the neighbours on one side, but Tony patched up that broken part of the fence and we thought that was the end of her wandering.  

     On Friday, Lucky was quacking in an ominous, warning tone. The kids and I rushed down.  Pepper had ‘disappeared.’ 

     ‘Pepper.  Pepper,’ I screamed.  ‘Pepper Zen, come here.’ 

     Pepper always honks if I call her, but there was nothing. I feared the worst; she’d got into the diagonal neighbour’s yard to the other side and the massive, growling mutt that patrols the back fence had eaten her.

     ‘Pepper, Pepper.’  I became frantic.

     A female's voice, old and acerbic, broke the silence. ‘Are you looking for the duck?’ 

     ‘Oh, yes.  Where is she?’

     ‘In MY garden …. AS USUAL.’  I apologised and apologised.  ‘Is it a drake or a duck?’  I assured her Pepper was a duck and a very friendly one.  ‘I’ll hand her over.’

     And she very kindly dropped Pepper over the fence.  I just managed to catch her.

     I thanked and thanked her, promised her I’d find where Pepper was getting through the fence and fix it.  Then I admonished Pepper before penning her in a tiny area with left over hay bales till I could buy some security-style fencing for Tony to erect.

     ‘Tonyyy,’ I always call out when there is a bloke job confronting me.  Fixing up a dodgy fence was one such job.

     Tony appeared and I related the dilemma.

     He sighed.  ‘Go to the hardware store and get something.  I’ll fix it up.’  

     And that’s how I ended up at the hardware store, not going to Yungaburra markets and rescuing six battery hens.