The viewing tower at the Reserve tonight was beautiful, groups of ducks hurtling in over our heads,, seemingly racing to get to their evening stopover, dipping and banking like much smaller birds, and then landing with sudden splashes in the marsh before us, to spend the night with their little orange legs dangling in the warm water of this marshy section of the Ipswich River.
We noticed two cormorants sitting high up in a dead tree, something I have never seen before. It must be quite difficult for web-footed birds to perch on branches. We actually went searching for Barred Owls, but sadly did not see any.
Dreams are our creative selves making up stories, influenced by what we have seen and felt and imagined. Amazing how real things seem, how you can smell and feel and touch and taste and everything is in grand technicolour! Last night I dreamed that Tim and I were suddenly in charge of a tiny baby that we had to look after for some reason, and the baby was crying so hard, it was starving, but we had nothing with which to feed it, no formula, bottle, nothing. So we were frantically driving to the hospital, where we would find the necessary things. I was holding her and thinking that I could probably breast-feed her, after all, I breast-fed so many babies for so many years, why not this one? (It was a dream, remember?) When suddenly I felt the familiar heavy flow through those cauliflower-looking milk-glands and ducts, and that old customary prickle as the milk began to trickle out of my nipple. I said to Tim, "It's ok, you can turn around and go home now, I can feed her!" and he regarded us in amazement as the milk continued to emerge and I latched the baby on where she fed hungrily.
Today I finally and guiltily went into my beehive, my one remaining hive. Last time I looked in the hive where the laying worker had set up her organisation, the bees had all died but earwigs had taken over, and there was a whole pile of them on the inside lid. I banged them all off, put the lid back on, and left it again, so today I went into my Loonie Lefties hive and everything seems pretty good, not much honey in the supers but I do have three deeps full of honey in my freezer, so will get some at least this year. (I am not a terribly sustained beekeeper, I tend to want them to do well and when they do it is great, and when they give me some honey that is a bonus, but generally I leave them to get on with things - what I love is standing in the middle of all the Celandine in the meadow and being hummed by all those bees, thrumming through my ears and into my body. A piece of Happiness.)
So then I had to decide what to do with the empty hive. I remembered that some of the frames were kind of old and blackened, and that I would put those aside for burning and only save the good more golden ones. On opening the lid, I noticed that there was what looked like an old mouse's nest through about three of the frames, the old blackened ones, thank goodness, so I kind of upended the hive with all the frames because once before there had been a mouse nest, and three mice and I had squeaked in fright at one another! I didn't think the nest was occupied though, for some reason.
I was casually sorting through everything when I noticed, with horror, these tiny creatures which looked like miniature pink pigs lying floundering on the ground! There were tiny baby mice in this nest and I had just thrown them violently about! There were seven, four were still in the nest-material, but three had been thrown out and one was lying on its back, crying with loud mouth wide open but no sound that I could hear. I immediately knelt down and carefully scooped up three squirmy tiny pink things, each about half the size of my pinkie finger, and settled them in the nest with their siblings, hoping that the mother mouse would come back for them. I remembered the dream, where I had saved a baby, and here the very next day I was destroying (possibly) a whole nest of babies! I felt like the evil farmer in The Secret of NIMH.
And yes, here I know there are many readers who think what an idiot I am, saving vermin, for goodness' sake!
But these are wild mice living in the bush, where they are supposed to live. They have their place in the food-chain. This little mother was just doing her mother-mouse job, finding the best possible location for her nest to keep her babies safe, which is all her responsibility. She doesn't have the benefit of a husband to help provide for the little ones, there is no one in the dark night to rescue her but herself. She had gathered soft stuff and woven a perfect little nest to hold the young. She is actually worthy of admiration, particularly since this little mouse did come back for her babies, and transported all seven of them somewhere else. I went back about an hour later to check on them, and they were all gone, carefully, with nothing disturbed, so I know another animal had not eaten them. And I wish her luck.
I know that other people would have killed them, but faced with those little pink lives, there was no way I could do it. That little mouth crying silently, broke my silly heart.
(Lab rats and mice have no protection under the law, they are the only animals which don't. I am very grateful for all the scientists who have developed better and different ways of testing medicines and other experiments so that lab animals like chimps and dogs and cats are not used as much anymore. The ubiquitous rats and mice are still a common lab animal, however.)
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