Size Matters

The day started extra early in anticipation of Piggle delivering her piglets, but she just lay head first in the straw, huffing and puffing until the feed bucket arrived at which point she forgot her labours and scoffed.

The Ryelands have been in maternity pens to make sure they bond with their offspring, so today as it was almost sunny they were marked with our unique hi-vis identification system and allowed to run riot on the runway. In a couple of days they will be allowed out on the bonsai mountain.

Once over the disappointment of Piggle's lack of effort I got on with the aviary project. This has gained a certain urgency with the arrival at HQ of two of its inhabitants, Zebra finches. They are currently in the conservatory with the quail who are also intended to reside in this five star all mod cons purpose built palace rather than a fish tank.


As ever the job got started with almost no planning and little idea of what the final product will actually look like. Help was at hand, or rather paw

with Reuben keeping bits in place while I fetched screws or the drill which was always just out of reach.

He who cannot be named phoned mid point and asked how things were going, pretty good so far. When asked for the dimensions I was a bit vaguer, its as tall as high as I can reach and big enough to use all the wood I ordered. Size matters.

By end of play, or rather end of time allotted to play chippie, the majority of the framework was complete with only one deliberate mistake (no gap for internal door type mistake) but I was very pleased with the progress, as were the finches who were able to see the construction site from their cage, providing the cat sat on it moved its tail.

I took dinner to the technohermit as the sun was setting, up the track I caught sight of Ebony who had escaped from the Corral OK the night we tried to rehouse Rosie the sausage pig who had unexpectedly given birth.

Ebony is now the proud mum of a very bonny lamb (gender unacertained) and they did what every sheep should do when approached by a man who's vegetarianism had been cured by a plate of lamb chops. They legged it.