Living With Animals

Uldarico, the baby goat, is getting larger everyday. He is, quite literally, the cutest thing.



With all the goats around, certain areas have become consistently covered in their "chocolate pebbles". The swing is unfit for spontaneous sitting:

New Goats

We got two new goats! And white ones, at that. Alas, one of them has been slaughtered to feed schoolchildren in Batangas. But, the younger one remains.



They are curious and cautious creatures.

Higad Time Again

Thanks to this blog, I've been able to track "seasons" in the garden. Higad season has been happening constantly from July-September, and they are munching away right now! Here are some photos.




Eating my nice Ilocos cotton seedlings, among other things:

More Flower-Nose, and New Garden Inhabitants

A bit after I posted about sesame flowers looking like noses, and some other flowers (Gmelina asiatica) used in Indian texts as nose references, the great website Indi Journal (which documents indigenous Philippine trees and plants) posted about Gmelina philippensis. I grew excited as I was greeted by a photo of a similar flower. The photo below is from Indi Journal.



On a related note, the rains are prolonging the harvest season of sesame. I know why they plant them for summer harvests. They aren't going to be ready anytime soon.



Okay, so we have two new friends in the garden: a male and female goat! Our grasscutter is perenially ill, so we have decided to procure some friends to eat their way around the area. This makes the transfer of plant matter to the soil much quicker (in the form of fecal matter), and is a better option than using gasoline to cut.



The female is, in the meantime, tied up. The male goes free. Before you draw up any parallels and raise a protest banner, this is just temporary, until they get their bearings. We find the male on top of strange things. They are not doing a very quick job of eating the grass (as you can see above), but we are so happy to have them.

They are still scared of people, with the female warming up faster. We've been feeding them a bit of salt everytime we give them water. They have been eating our sweet potato plants. As you can imagine, I am awoken by the confused rooster (citylights messing his instinct up), and all day listen to bleats, barks, tweeting birds.

The Stinger Returns

And so we meet again, stinging little mofo. I was hacking leaves off as mulch from a madre de cacao tree, whistling along smiling about how much the higad population has subsided when I saw this fat, motionless, vicious little caterpillar. About the length of my thumbprint (and I do have quite the average size for an adult American, though I am not American), and with attractive green stripes.



I poked it around with a stick, its spines are quite tough and are not little hairs at all, but cold-hearted spines with black tips. These get left in your skin and produce a very unique pain that is associated with jellyfish-- beyond typical higad itch. This one looks so much like a marine animal that it makes sense to sting.



And it has four black dots on its ass, most probably dud eyes. I know it is the tail-end because as I was examining it, some "frass" or caterpillar poop came right out. It must be really juicy and tasty, to have all this protection.



Here are some similar types that I've found on the net. Not exactly it, but it has the spiny stuff which is so new to me. I look forward to discovering the nuances of the spiny family of stinging bastards. I mean this in the best way possible. I took the bugger and transferred it far off, so it may develop into a moth in peace.

Stinging Rose Caterpillar
Saddleback Caterpillar

July Higads

During this time of the year, and somehow with the rains, come the onslaught of itchy, hairy caterpillars (higad) of many shapes and sizes. They are under leaves, over leaves. They are most bastardous when they are eating low plants (ankle-level) because your feet get itchy. This itch can persist until you are wearing shoes and sipping soup in some fancy restaurant. Or just wearing shoes in general.

Higad season is happening right about the same time as last year. Some suggested chickens would help, but they don't eat the crawlies. Someone told me that cows die from eating higad, but that sounded like speculation.

Reptile

Been seeing this reptile around a lot. Him/her and their family of babies. Its neck is reddish. It is fast, hence the crappy photos!

Prisoners

I mentioned last time that we have to keep a couple of chickens caged. According to Papa, it is because the free-range alpha male presence sometimes separates chicks from moms, and also he crows like a crazy fool in the wee hours of the morning. So they were demoted to a chicken cage under the kapok and coconut trees.

I generally feel bad for the two, especially the female. The male attacks her when there is food, trying to monopolize the supply. I try to supplement with grasses and berries from the garden, which they love. I have to be more systematic about bringing them there, though. Sometimes all they get is rice. We're not fattening them up to eat them or anything, apparently they are trying to keep the peace in the garden. But still!



There were three eggs deposited in the laying basket by the female a month ago, and they were still there the other day. I figured they were rotten, since she doesn't sit on them anymore. We took them and put them in some water. They didn't float, so we composted them.

Chicken Adaptation Measures

I've written before about our chickens. Now there are a lot more. It has gotten to a point when sometimes I get alarmed by an unfamiliar specimen (a former chick all grown up). I guess I also was pretty used to chick “die-offs”, during the rainy season, that the population explotion has gotten me baffled. Considering we don't feed them anything, and don't cage them (except for the only male and one companion, because he keeps crowing at ungodly hours), they are all pretty healthy.

They still, however, topple my potted seedlings over, and scatter mulch around. When they are particularly frenzied, they can run little plants over and step on them like they mean it.

I've been trying to find ways to chicken-proof my seedlings. An urgent goal is to build a chicken house and chicken tractors. In the meantime, we've had to find ways. One is by enclosing the baby plants in cages. This cage is covered with a dry coconut shell to keep out too much sun, and to make the rain or water more gentle as it falls.



Another recent experiment was to put some plants on a bed of soil (fresh compost-- chicken magnets), and cover the blank spaces with empty half coconut shells (of which we have an obscene supply of, due to food consumption). I tamped the shells down with my feet.





That worked fine, but they need to be supplemented by sticks. I put in this small patch with stevia, some amaranth or pepper (I can't tell), tomato, and okra. I put sticks over the stevia and half-heartedly, over the rest. I did this as the sun was setting, to have a bit of a test-run with chicken behavior, and still have the night to recover little plants if they have damage from the chickens. Here's the test-run:



One shell (with bits of old coconut under) was turned over. Oops! Never underestimate the leg power of chickens. If they sense they want something, they'll throw anything about. Another family messing about with my set-up:



The next day I discovered that the morning gave renewed strength and will to the chickens. All but the stevia and one amaranth/pepper were strewn on the bed and beyond hope, and the shells were reassembled. The ones with sticks survived, showing lazy me that sticks arranged teepee-like are needed to deter chickens.

A cool thing about this coconut arrangement is that if you have a shitty watering pot (like mine) with no attachment that breaks the water down into droplets, you can aim the strong flow at the tops of the coconut shells, where they will trickle down into their bases. No worries about knocking sensitive seedlings out.

This is not meant to be permanent, however, and after a chicken-hotel is constructed, and the plants get big enough to mulch massively, the shells will come off. In the meantime, they look nice.

Informal Settlers

I apologize again for the long absence. In addition to being in and out of town, I've also been experiencing problems with laptop battery retardation. I'm operating a laptop now without a battery, so I always need power to blog-- I can't blog in transit. That's making me a bit remiss in recording my thoughts.

But anyway, someone has taken residency near our workshop/garage. It's a little white puppy with short legs, the child of the white dog who makes frequent appearances in our garden. Here it is, resting in a relatively hidden spot before sprinting across the grass into its home.



It's a really cute thing and scared of people. I'm a bit fascinated as to how the mother-child tandem are able to work out an arrangement of living close to each other (the ma lives somewhere in our garden, I suspect), but separate, for the sake of safety. The puppy climbs into the tangle of vines and baskets, and surfaces to be with his/her mother or to eat.

One time, because of my brutish nature, I waited by its home and tried to grab the puppy to inspect it more closely. Unfortunately, it was really frightened, and half its body was inside the basket-jungle, so I would have had to tear it in half to extract it. It started crying with a voice that much exceeded its size, and the mom arrived on the scene soon after. Honestly, I felt really bad about stressing it out, but I was just overcome with curiosity. The mom was kind enough to just stand beside us and make sure I didn't harm the pup.

Often they go out together, presumably on learning lessons about hunting or foraging for food, or maybe plain togetherness. Here is a photo of the pup crossing the dangerous grass area where it is likely to be grabbed by curious residents of our home:



And here is the mom following it across:

Pasko Na Naman Muli

(The title means "It's Christmas again", it's a cool Filipino Christmas jovial song.)



I spotted a brown shrike (tarat), seeking refuge in the Philippines from the cold Chinese winters, outside my window this morning (photo was taken through a screen, that's why it's crappy). The migratory tarat, different from our local black ones, usually arrives around September, but I haven't seen one this year until today.

A few days ago in Cambodia, while zooming around the city on a moped, I would often remark loudly, above the wind, "Putangina!! Ang lamig!!!!" and go on about how it never gets that cold in the Philippines. Well, I came back to the garden and realized, that it indeed almost measures up.

The nights are a bit too cold for my tropical constitution, and I can't take a shower without heating water (which I do in a kettle, with added herbs for fragrance and pleasure). The soil is a bit dry, with humidity pretty low overall. There is still morning dew, but I don't think there is as much decomposing happening. The mushrooms on my logs are going away. And, oddly enough, there are mosquitoes everywhere.

Frankly, I haven't understood this weather completely just yet. I was looking forward to putting a bunch of plants in, but it seems to be pretty difficult to do that now, my gut tells me.

I need some more time to figure this whole mood out, and I'll post about it. In the meantime, behold our family Christmas bamboo!

Tick Treats

Dog blood must taste good, because we have another garapata (tick) wave now. Sarge brought the ticks in, and so now I am busy making some proven "tick brew" to rinse them with. More on that later. The point is that sometimes when I pet Oakley, I feel a fat stuffed tick (like a soaked raisin), and pull it out. I get a bit obsessed (like popping bubble wrap) and do it until I've got enough in my hand, I call the chickens with clucking sounds.

They know I've got either worms or fruit or something for them. In any case, one animal's parasite is another's chibog!



They love the stuff. And can you just imagine? It must taste to them like a chocolate truffle with rich ganache in the middle. Or some onde-onde. Some people may think it absolutely nauseating, but our dogs aren't bathed or powdered with chemicals, so it's just insect matter and blood.

An added thing is that fallen ticks climb to the tops of grasses and plants to wait for a someone or some animal to hitchhike on, and walking-round chickens can solve that.

Chickens Are Great (and Confusing)!

Some stories and tips! It seems like only yesterday that new mother hen Meng (above, named after my favorite tsokolate joint) was a chick. Now she has seven little chickies of her own! I woke up to the little twitting sounds last week. I checked in the kaing and true enough, there were heads sticking out! We moved the kaing to the empty aviary (birds set free) so that the little ones will not be eaten by cats (or the dog, more of that later).

It is actually a bit of a confusing story here. Before this "wave" of chicks, Puti's eggs had exploded, and I moved Uldarica's eggs into her nest, on dried neem leaves to combat further infection of eggs. I thought they were Puti's eggs that she laid in a different place (our barrel of mucuna beans).



Turns out, Uldarica had already started laying some of her own! I stopped transferring them to Puti's nest, and after a few days, she promptly began sitting on the beans.



And so we had two batches of eggs hatch, both Uldarica's, at almost the same time (few days difference). Puti (the white one) thought they were her own chicks, but she was actually an adoptive mama to two. These were the two mamas with two chicks each:





Both the chicks in the last photo above are dead. Only very recently, after they had grown to about 5-6 inches long already, one was eaten by a cat, and the other, was bitten by Sarge yesterday. I heard it crying and turned around and startled the large puppy, and he laid it down. I carried it (it started flapping wildly and was still drenched in saliva) to a safe spot and later gave it to Evon for safekeeping. It eventually died, with a bone sticking out of its neck.

Sad fact of life. Well, that is why they lay so many eggs. There are so many more predators and dangers if you are small and probably tasty.

Since her two chicks have died, Uldarica has started making laying sounds again.

Anyway, as I mentioned, after hatching, we now place the chicks in our aviary so they can scratch around the ground under. After they grow larger, we put them in this movable cage that we shift around the garden, so that new area may be conquered for worms and fruit and such:



Chickens are great and are good friends for making your garden nice and healthy. They distribute wild fruit and vine all over the place. Eventually, if you don't clean up, chicken-friendly plants will start to grow. Also be sure to have a lot of places of refuge like thorny bushes that have hollow hiding spaces in the middle.

Hornworm

This caterpillar of a moth was caterpillaring around the lagundi plant. As I touched it, it started thrashing around like a wild woman. Its skin is hard, not at all like you expect, as you think it would be like a marshmallow. It is a hornworm, sometimes called a unicorn caterpillar, for obvious reasons. A curious little creature.

Stung

The other day I was stung on the arm by this tiny beautiful caterpillar. Felt quite like a jellyfish sting. Welted up as you'd expect, but later in the subsided to a flat red mark.