The Daily Good News
I have 4 bird baths in my garden all strategically located so that birds big and small can quickly dart in get a drink or bath.
But do this year’s magpie fledglings use any of them? No they don’t, preferring instead to use by old labrador’s water bowl.
It’s very funny seeing the lab watching them laying on his bed, all of 3 feet away, while they squabble over the water.
Magpie fledglings are full of character and playfulness, a joy.
The local wattlebirds like to hop along the top of the fence and tease our Jack Russell mercilessly, squawking at him each time he barks. Hours of fun for all, except the neighbours.
Sitting around a fire about 10pm last night and the bloke who's house we were at answered his phone. He then passed it to me, "It's your wife, she wants to talk."
At 10pm? You know the news can't be good...
"Max is shaking uncontrollably and can't walk," she says. "Can you come home straight away?"
Max is the dog. King of the yard.
Bolted home to see brudda Maxy was indeed in a bad way, shaking and laying prone on the ground, trying to wag his tail when he saw me, while up close his breathing was shallow and his eyes were grey.
I'd had too much wine to drive so I picked him up and put him in the car and Tash drove. I stayed home with the kids and waited for news.
No idea what it could've been. He ate some rotten compost earlier in the day but he'd done that before. Few spiders had been on the move in the yard, that was a possibility, and I was wondering why he'd been barking at an open drain over in the corner of the yard. Snake?
After midnight Tash returned on her own with news the vet thought it was tick paralysis. They gave him an injection and antibiotics, but...
Fuck.
Spent a long night thinking that was the last time I'd see him alive; head filled with melodrama. Then this morning we had to tell the kids what happened and prepare them for the likely outcome.
Drove down there early so we could get to the vet as soon as it opened, and from the expression on her face I could tell the news was good.
"Fortunately you got him in here early. Much later and the outcome might have been different."
Brought Maxy home but I can tell he's feeling ginger. Didn't even bark at the open drain in the corner of the yard, nor the staghorn, and didn't do his mandatory trot around the perimeter either, just walked inside, ate half a bowl of Chum, then crashed on his favourite rug.
Not a dry eye in the house after that tale.
Be strong, Max ....stay away from the light !
Ticks are fucked.
PS Got a few baby Magpies around here too. Little legends .Noisy bastards but.
You feed Max, Chum? You’re not serious are you?
Not a dry eye after getting the bill either.
Emergency response. On a weekend. After hours.
Now I'm the one hurting.
Dont usually feed him Chum, but the vet said his breathing could be laboured for another 24hrs so we shoudln't feed him any dry foods because it can go down the wrong way.
So a can of Chum it was.
He wasn't fussy about it.
Poor fella, glad he's ok. We've had a few run ins with ticks over the years. Evil little f****s those things are.
Our vet just bought one of those flash Benz SUV's. I reckon I've paid for a good portion of it.
Haven’t fed any of dogs tinned food for 15+ years. Our current lab was fed dry food early, one of the many recommended by vets but ....... he was suffering terrible skin rashes needing a cream that didn’t work but cost $65 pw from the vet. Long story but a lab breeder we met by accident looked at our dog from a few feet away and proceeded to tell us, correctly, what his problem was, what we feed him and what the vet was prescribing. Bingo! We were told dry food was crap and the only food to feed dogs was raw meat with some vegetables and fruit. We did that and our lab hasn’t looked back. He’s very healthy now, great skin and coat and his shits aren’t sloppy ... something to think about maybe.
Got a message from my daughter the other night. She and the kids howling their eyes out thinking that a tick had got to the much loved family dog. Rushed him to the emergency after hours vet thinking the worst, only to be told that it was not a tick, but an extra nipple up high.......
All the best with Maxy, Stu.
ticks are fucked.
got one on my balls surfing a backbeach at Broken and ended up in hospital having an anaphylactic reaction.
pulled one off my arse the other night- or wife did.
our place is crawling with ticks at the moment.
pulling big paralysis ticks off the ducks daily.
hope he comes good quickly Stu.
my balls were swollen up like grapefruits for about a week.
Not sure I need those images in my head but sorry to hear that FR76. But I have heard that ticks have an automatic drop response when they detect co2 from animals passing under them. I try to hold my breath when walking under thick scrub on shitty beach tracks.
If you’re in a tick area you need to know about Lyme disease. Not really a issue here but in the US and increasing so in Europe it’s a real problem. With the explosion in feral deer here it could become one. There is a correct way to remove one, you can also buy tick removal tools pretty cheaply
Dont worry about them falling...its more around ankle height your going to get them
Tick Dragging Tick collectors drag or throw a blanket on the grass to collect them for serum ..can get many in one blanket throw
good money in it i believe $1 each ?
best advice I can find for ticks is ether spray, which freezes them instantly and kills them, preventing further toxin envenomation.
then pull off with tweezers, making sure you get the head out.
Ticks were an occupational hazard back in the day (along with tiger snakes) over here.
Always seemed to gravitate towards the balls and 'notya' area as well.
And always packed a can of WD40 too for emergency treatment in the field (handy for everything indeed), then back home and the tweezers.
Primitive perhaps, but then again, our hounds got fed Good-os back then as well.
Ticks! Cunts of things.
Tick removal tool $6 at Survival Firstaid.
I looked that up Udo , ,,,"dragging",,, out of curiosity . They also do something called flagging ,, but I think its mainly for the 'black legged tick' species in the nymph stage that live in the leaf litter ,,,which is primarily responsible for lymes disease in the states.
anyone had the delightful scrub itch, which is the larval stage of a mite, I believe?
did some bush regen work with a mate down the bottom end of Broken and was scratching for weeks.
Is there anything in this world itchier than frigging sand fly bites? NW WA scourge!
yes ,,,,,, pubic lice
Close but no cigar.
So to speak.
and to hopefully make everyone smile, here is something beaut from back in August on Mt Field:
Special Video: Platypus on the ski run at My Field ❄ #Tasmania video: https://t.co/RvUeRKVS09 @SNOWSEARCH_aus pic.twitter.com/cTyznSLEdf
— Tasmania Today (@today_tasmania) August 17, 2019
Thanks VJ, that made me chuckle.
Hope s/he found some liquid water!
Great wasn't it? We were swimming in a cold stream up in the NE Tas high country with our kids once and had a fullsize Tassie platypus swim right past them, magic.
Pops were you the fellow with the knowledge of flow modelling? I've been gradually building up quite a few 3d items to put into the virtual water... any tips?
Wow, what an experience.
And yeah, that'd be me - still haven't forgotten that you asked if I could model a board design idea in an article a while back; haven't gotten around to it yet.
By virtual water I assume you mean some kind of CFD software? Do a bit of reading on discretisation methods and turbulence models... There's a fair number of different ways to do it, some less stable than others for certain scenarios, some less accurate than others for certain scenarios. If you use the wrong one, the model with either crash or give garbage results. And unless you've got a lot of time, patience and computing power, stick with a steady-state horizontal free-surface model. Modelling a breaking wave in a stable manner, and getting the board in the right location is HARD!
Cheers Pops, thanks for that info, I now know where to dig. Was going to walk before I can run, thinking of a fin in a laminar flow then playing around with angle of attack to start with. A breaking wave, wow!
Australia miraculously dodges a big bullet FOR REAL.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/government-s-union-busting-bill-...
She's good for something - who woulda thought it?
The first real rain in my neck of the woods in the past four months!
If you didn't include the first three days of August, that's less than 20mm in that time.
It's a joy to finally see a little bit.
Best part of 15mm.
Quite a few people walking with a bit of a spring in their step.
Glad to hear some moisture falling. Was looking at the observations and noticed Mount Seaview recorded 91.4mm rain on Tuesday, seems very unrealistic seeing than nothing significant at Port Mac and surrounds and rivers observations haven't changed. More weather records being fudged.
Happy start to summer you weirdos.
Leroy, Mt Seaview is a rain magnet and catches more rain than the coast. There have been a series of isolated storms coming from the west that have fizzled out towards the coast. No fudging there.
Yes, very aware of location and isolated storms, but nearly 4" of rain fell and nothing ran off into the creek/river, absolutely nothing? No one dancing in the rain whilst the area is surrounded by fires?
http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDN60232/IDN60232.560002.plt.shtml
Just seems very odd that's all.
ps, still one of the best drives up and over the divide you can do with the windows down listening to the bell birds
Sometimes things happen that affect the raw data readings. It's usually corrected later though. No-one is 'fudging weather records'.
I can't read the second link (subscriber only), but Jennifer Marohasy is a climate sceptic, and was formerly a senior fellow at the IPA. That article was published on Watts Up With That, a website promoting climate change denial.
Here's a good explanatory article:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2014/aug/27/climate-sc...
Some good news for today = Jacqui Lambie
Labor were foolish to go anywhere near that Medivac legislation this time last year. Dr Kerryn Phelps provided an irresistible bone when she tabled it, and Labor predictably bit down.
It would have undoubtably been a factor in Labor’s unexpected election loss in May. Maybe that was her plan? Phelps has always been a card carrying conservative, despite her bleeding heart sympathy for the refugees rotting in offshore detention.
Australian’s have shown clearly at past elections that they are susceptible to scare campaigns over weakened border protection. Will Labor never learn?
The real losers in this shit show aren’t Labor politicians denied the career opportunity to sit on government benches, it’s the low income earners having their penalty rates cut, middle income earners seeing their spending power flatline as wages stagnate, not to mention the poor bastards stuck on Newstart being robo-debted while trying to survive at 40% below the poverty line.
When is Labor going to realise these disadvantaged Australians are the ones who suffer when Labor try and take the moral high ground on these types of issues? Who do they represent? A class of Australians forgotten by the dominant conservative political forces in this country, or foreigners (refugee or not) who are seeking are better life by seeking any means to reach our shores?
They should really be changing their name from the ALP to the FLP* if they’re honest.
* Foreign Labor Party
And what should the liberals and nationals change their names to Blowin?
Ever been to India...? Then get this india...
http://www.mtv.com.au/comedy-central/news/mike-nolan-from-the-big-lez-sh...
Fark, sold out already!
KUUUUUUUUUUUUNT
Profit Before People ( PBP ) and Fake Farmer Miner’s party ( FFM ) respectively.
Greens are Symbolism Before Reality party ( SBR ).
They all jostle for control of the Economic Zone Formerly Known As Australia ( EZFKAA ). Soon to be the vassal state of New South Canton.
One Nation?
Anti Migration Ponzi party.
AKA
No Other Option party ( NOO ! )
But that ain’t good news.
Good news is that It’s only a few weeks till everyone has a big catch up with their families, gets a bit of time off and taste a slice of Aussie summer.
Hmmm this is not good Factotum it seems we now have one thing in common, a love of Mike Nolan.
Nick X? Democrats? Palmer?
Dedicated to good news ....