Tag Archives: Foxy

Foxy, neighbours and Chick

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Foxy had it (them) in her after all!  She waited until the sun was shining, the grass was lushly green and the cow parsley, may and horse chestnut flowers were at their zenith, and finally got down to it.  When I saw what was going on and came back up the lane at warp speed, she was busily giving birth against a backdrop of verdant rural loveliness. It was all very artistic, and she milked it for all it was worth (pretty black sheep produces gorgeous black twins in preferred medium of extreme Cotswold rural beauty).

I fussed around, once I realised what was happening, but quite honestly she didn’t need me at any stage.  Once she was finished I picked up the lambs (soggy but sweet) and she trundled after me into the lambing shed and is now comfortably back where she was before, lounging in extreme comfort and calling for dainty meals to tempt her appetite at regular intervals.  And ivy, lots of ivy.  She’s running me ragged, and I’ll let her out very soon if the weather keeps fine.

Her twins are both completely black, one boy and one girl.  Very friendly and sweet, and I’ve already wasted far too much time playing with them.

And now I can turn my attention back on matters outside the lambing shed.  Many of my neighbours have turned bright pink in the recent fine weather, quite a startling effect when you see them en masse in the village shop, like a particularly virulent sunset.  Julia is still running, and still going (not to put too fine a point on it) extremely slowly.  She’s started taking her dog with her on a lead when she runs, and quite often he walks as she runs, which tells you something.

Frank’s one man battle against cow parsley is reaching a crescendo, and he seems to spend every daylight hour whacking furiously at billowing banks of flowers – sometimes the lane is completely carpeted with the bodies of the fallen.  But no matter how many he cuts down, there are always more.  Thank goodness, I love cow parsley.

Chick is definitely a girl, which is great.  I’ll ask Mikey to put a photo of her on the blog.  Her feathers are completely curly, and I have got a dreadful feeling that I’m going to call her Frillz.  She should be called something pretty like Annabel but every time I look at her I think Frillz.  With a Z.  You’ll see what I mean when you see her photo.

A surprised bat and new robins (but no lambs)

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Bats.  I had a bit of a bat moment early this morning.  Our field gate has a chain and padlock on it, and I needed to open it.  It was only just dawn and as I fumbled in the half-light to insert my key, my sleep-deprived brain registered that the padlock was surprisingly furry.  Then the padlock gave a squeak and flew away because actually it was a bat.   Both bat and me got an energising jolt of adrenalin, and another delightful close encounter with a different species.

Still no lamb from Foxy (I’ve given up on her, I think she’s got too comfortable in her maternity suite, guzzling meadow hay and not getting on with it so I’m going to let her out with Lupin and the girls today – if that doesn’t do it, nothing well).

When I strolled into the lambing shed a few days ago, a small brown projectile whizzed past my ear, said PEEP! at the sort of pitch that shatters wine glasses and melts earwax, and vanished into the open air.  When I had a quick look in the direction it came from, I found a beautiful nest, cunningly woven from hay (Foxy’s hay), straw (Foxy’s straw) and dead leaves built into the stash of dandy brushes etc that I keep up there to groom the horses.  The nest contained some small pale eggs with red freckles on them, I didn’t linger to count them in case I upset the proud mama who I was sure was lurking close by.

I had a very cautious look today, when I’d given up telling Foxy to get moving, and the nest is full of tiny fuzzy chicks with enormous yellow beaks.  They really are sweet.  From a quick google, I think they are robin chicks and they are my consolation prize as Foxy continues to stay in one piece.  I’m not sure how long it takes robin chicks to fledge, but I’m going to have to use a different set of brushes for the time being.

Foxy

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Foxy and me go back a long way.  She came to me several years ago as a coal-black bottle-fed lamb, all cute and fuzzy and loving.  Bottle-fed lambs are like that, they adore you and constantly assure you that it is nothing to do with the large bottle of milk you are holding, but because you are such a spectacularly wonderful person in your own right.  In your secret soul you know it’s the bottle, but you go along with it.

When Foxy (formal name: Foxglove) grew up, she remained very tame and with a particular interest in rubber tyres.  In her private dream life she’s a tractor driver, and watching her stand still with just her head going round and round as she closely watches a quad bike drive slowly past is one of my favourite sights.

But after a week in the lambing shed watching Foxy not lambing, my love for her is wearing thin.  Put it this way – if she was staked out on a railtrack with a steam engine driven by Casey Jones coming around the corner and I was the only person who could save her, I would still do it.  But I would walk, not run.  Regularly she tells me that IT’S COMING! (or, knowing Foxy, THEY’RE COMING!) and I rush about dropping lambing ropes, and iodine bottles, and re-reading the lambing diagrams in my sheep book etc, and then she settles back into the straw with a contented sigh like a poodle on a beanbag.  No lambs.

I let Lupin and her girls out today, and they are having a wonderful time.  I hoped the sight of the little girls prettily discovering meadow flowers for the first time might get Foxy going.  Not a chance.  So as my blogs stop making sense because of extreme tiredness, please bear with me.  And blame Foxy.  Nature notes:

A Little Owl came and sat on a fence post near to the lambing shed this morning.  It sat for a long time without moving, gave a mighty yawn and flew off.  It was a privilege to share a field with it, but I got the strong impression that mentally it was not the sharpest knife in the cutlery box.

The Swallows are still at it, guide books in hand:  “well I was flying up the Rhine, you know the Rhine?  Well there’s this little place on the Rhine that has the most AMAZING gnats.  I’ve got a contact in the Rhine who always keeps the best gnats back for me and I say Hans those are the most AMAZING gnats …’   I’m praying they’ll start nest building soon, it won’t be so easy to tell never ending traveller’s tales with a beak full of mud.