Who knew there were so many animals that started with "R"? "What did Ross see while he was doing the slashing today?" S asked as we drove in the general direction of the airport. "A squirrel.". "Close, but this isn't North America'". "A wombat" (because there's no way I'm going anywhere near "snake). "No." "A raccoon." (Yes, yes, still not North America.). "It starts with R." "Rabbit." A sigh from Suzanne which I ignore as I start to go through the alphabet, sure that the first two letters are "R" and "A" and I've made it all the way to "F", just, when this voice from the back seat pipes up with "Rat". We have a winner ! Yes, Ross was fairly sure he had slashed through a rat's nest - which was good to know when later this evening Pearl went out the front door to attend to dog business and became very interested in something between S's vege garden and the house. A big rat, not alive, which is just as well otherwise L, M and C would have been wondering what the screams coming from Latimers were all about. S was kind enough to attend to it while I tried to keep Pearl, Maggie (it's mine, it's mine), Beazley and Tink from pouncing - pity I wasn't doing a very good job of it. It is of course Monday which meant the rubbish was already at roadside so S asked if it is usually empty by the time I drive out in the morning ... well, sometimes, so let's not give me rattie to dispose of there just in case they're already empty and I have to dispose of him elsewhere (d'oh - the whole problem with that thinking has only just hit me - but B might have ended up with a rat hat when he lifted the bin into the ute if I'd left it in there).
The bananas are coming along nicely and finally we have an answer to what's eating the lemons. Cockatoos. (What's that S - don't say anything about the tractor getting bogged? M would only worry? But it wasn't really bogged, just stuck, and they got it out pretty quickly ... thank goodness Larry was around to offer help/advice - and that it hadn't been raining that heavily.)
We ended up going to the local for dinner last night and the place was almost deserted. There were only a couple of other diners, four drinkers, three cars in the carpark, and the staff - ah, yes and we have no direct evidence of this but we strongly suspect that the chefs had company in the form of a big vat of MSG which they were liberally using in their cooking.
And before that, on the way back from the airport, we took a drive past a gate to the Hinze Dam construction work. The lights were on and someone at the pub was saying they do work around the clock. S was pretty stunned that we ended up there at all - following Gilson Road and Gomez the GPS to what was supposed to be the Advancetown Town Centre. My but the roads are dark in those parts - and I was on the lookout for wildlife and BIG things. And who knew that "no through road" signs meant just that ...or that I would resolutely ignore three or four of them. And isn't it incredible that the Advancetown Town Centre is supposedly exactly where the gates are!
And speaking of the Dam, in the letterbox today was an invitation to a residents' BBQ on site. That is scheduled for sometime in September - a week night. I think we should go and have a look there - and this weekend at the show ... and "Ghost Writer" ... and the Eisteddfod ... there's certainly no shortage of things to keep us going and to distract us from our almost hung Parliament. Wonder if anyone will come up with the headline "Ahead by a nose" if/when Labor gets an advantage ... seems like a good headline (she suggests not quite clairvoyantly) for the Gold Coast Bulletin tomorrow!
