Hoopoe--wail

The haze is still present. Not a volcano, let alone island in sight.

But here is the good news; for Granny, if noone else. A hoopoe seems to have added itself to the residents. A week ago it got into the house and had to be shooed out. Yesterday, mirrored in the kitchen window, it spent an age attacking itself, in vain; quite ignoring an interested Feline Houdini. This morning it appeared on the balcony outside granny's (now re-inhabited, post guests) bedroom window. Its beak silhouetted is long long long - a perfect tool for digging out insects. Its silhouette, with crest opened or folded by turns, is ridiculous and wonderful both.

The impertinent shrike meantime has taken to attacking Feline Houdini. Evidently it has a nest somewhere. Feline Houdini looks puzzled but doesn't react.

The bad news is: also for Granny and possibly for anyone frustrated by the slowness of the Blogger comment system. She has spent an hour trying to install Haloscan. And FAILED.

She is reading a lovely book on pigs of all things. The WHOLE HOG. Author claims they are the cleverest of animals - probably true - unfortunately, in passing, he underrates sheep. (Far from stupid creatures as anyone who has tried to keep them trapped in a field knows.)

He quotes Churchill: who says: Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you, pigs look you in the eye.

Granny would add first, that that the yellow eyes of sheep appear to look nowhere; they live in quite other places, like the eyes of hawks. (She knows this because thirty years ago, in another life, oiled by the work from head to foot, she helped the shearers who were denuding the poor grannies, shoving each indignantly naked one outside and folding up their fleeces.) She would add, second, that humans, very often, look past you...

She likes pigs.