Posie's Blog. Tales of island life on a hebridean hill farm

Posie's Blog. Tales of island life on a hebridean hill farm

Wednesday 18 May 2011

Ruby the Tiger leaps into action.....

I have found the perfect solution to getting teenage son up and out of bed in the morning. ‘Ruby the Tiger springs into action’.

Ruby gets up bright and early and ventures out of her kennel and into the farmhouse for an hour or so each morning where she takes delight in winding up youngest before school. Her antics involve a predictable routine of running off with the school shoes and hiding them, trying desperately to share breakfast with her, and if all else fails, pulling the pony tail out of youngest’s hair with those ever snapping little jaws of hers.

The girls packed off to school, the happy farmer and I went in search of Charlie hen’s nest. Feathers all rumpled Charlie flew onto the arm of the bench this morning and proceeded to squawk at high volume to announce to all and sundry the arrival of a new egg. I still am at a loss as to why hens like to alert everyone to the fact that they have just laid an egg; surely it cannot be a good thing when predators, such as Mist the sheep dog, are lurking close by. Anyhow her distress signals were a most welcome sound to us as sure enough we found, neatly stored in a snug nest of long grass behind the vegetable propagator, a nest of twenty or so eggs all waiting to be mixed into the next batch of fresh baking for the pottery tea room.

Not wanting to advertise Charlie’s nest to the pup, Ruby was left in the farmhouse to her own devices whilst we were retrieving our ‘treasures’. Teenage son, who is on study leave just now, was deep in the land of slumber when he was awoken by the howling and yowling of an anxious pup, who thought she had been left home alone. Now teenagers can be pretty grumpy when awoken abruptly like this and a quick bark of ‘RUBY’, hailed from the depths of his ‘pit’, I mean bedroom, alerted one excited pup to the fact that she was not  alone at all. She bounded up those stairs like a tornado, sprang at a rate of knots through the door, leapt several feet through the air, and landed with a clumsy splat on top of teenage son. Here she proceeded to cover his face in huge ‘slurpy’ big licks. Son was up, out of bed, and downstairs in an instant, with one smiling pair of jaws, belonging to a certain pup, clamped firmly to the leg of his jeans .

Luckily Ruby hadn’t been for her walk through sheep poo field this morning.

Until next time….

38 comments:

Pondside said...

Ah yes - a boy and his dog.....always something going on. I'm sure your son was happy that the walk in poo hadn't yet happened!

jane said...

Oh Posie - your blogs are sheer fun - I can remember searching out the hens nests when I was a kid - they were always so well hidden - there was always one rebel who was determined not to use a nest box - x

Posie said...

Pondside he was pleased the poo field hadn't yet been visited, but so was I!! Ruby would of course be banned from the house until she was pristine, or imagine the mess!!
Jane - Charlie is the rebel lol, the rest lay in the hen house, but Charlie does not do hen houses, in fact she prefers to roost in the fuschia bush under the stars.

Fennie said...

Pup will have to sleep on boy;s bed obviously. That way they will get up together. But poor Charlie - to lose 20 eggs. That's an awful lot of laying. Think of having to do that all again. And they probably cluck out of sheer joy at having delivered that uncomfortable and heavy hard object that had been gumming up their nether regions.

Molly said...

That Ruby! She's such a little character. Good job you found the eggs before she did Posie!

Exmoorjane said...

Posie, I need your address! I've decided to split the prize and you're a winner. :) Email me? janeATjanealexanderDOTorg xxx

Bluestocking Mum said...

Great way to get teenager out of bed!

My old boy would never get up the stairs any more. Super post.
xx

Chris Stovell said...

Yes, gosh, what is it with hens and all that clucking? The last thing I wanted to do when I had the girls was shout! I bet Ruby was overjoyed to find that she wasn't home alone!

diney said...

Haha! Great way to wake the teenager!! We also have a secret weapon - Lola our Jack/Dach (Jack russell/Dachshund) who also leaps onto youngest's bed in the morning then burrows inside the bed and goes to sleep on her feet. Actually, Lola doesn't really do me any favours, as daughter loves to stay in bed longer then!

Norma Murray said...

Heh! Heh! My boys are grown up now, but I remember those times so well. We had a particularly heavy and spiteful cat who came in handy at times.
Like you, I've often wondered why hens like to alert everyone to the fact that they have just laid an egg. A real puzzle.

Elizabethd said...

Posie, I would like to send you an e mail, and cant find your address. Could you come back to me via my email please, its on my profile.

Rob-bear said...

A little bit of memory, hopefully correct.

The codfish lays ten thousand eggs
the homely hen lays one
the codfish never cackles
to tell you what she's done.
And so we praise the humble hen
but the codfish we despise
which simply goes to show you
that it pays to advertise.

Maggie Christie said...

I've just been playing catch up with your blogs - the sheep poo one really made me laugh. Here the dogs and us chase the cheep not the other way around, but our dogs also eat every type of poo available.

Ruby is adorable. I can just imagine the grin of her jaws clamped on your son's jeans. What a dog!

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