Roo Mail

Out here in the Australian outback sometimes the only way to get something done is to think outside the square.
The Roo Mail was started to cope with the harsh outback conditions that humans are not equipped to deal with.
After running for some time it's been found that the new Roo postal service has backfired somewhat. With their limited intelligence and preoccupation with food and sex it has been found that the Roos are better equipped for managerial positions. The situation now exists where the people do the hard slog out in the bush, crossing the rivers and coping as best they can with the harsh conditions while the Roos battle it out in the board rooms.

Such is Life!


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Who’d own a ute?

Recently I sold my big Ford sedan and bought a nice little Toyota ute, it seemed like a good idea seeing as there’s just me in the house these days and a ute is very handy to have.
It all went well for a few months, and I learned some things about utes and about people. Firstly, owning a ute means everyone will be calling you up every time they need to pick up or drop off something. I’ve had people wanting to put everything in there from oily car engines to fridges and even horse soil… and I've mostly resisted the urge to comply.
But I recently had a trip to the state capital for a few days and the ute was a complete pain in the ass!
Every time I parked it somewhere I came back to find the tarp lifted and the ute searched for booty. (pirate talk not ghetto lingo)
My huge toolbox lives chained and locked across the tray and is covered by the tarp, one night they even had a go at removing the entire thing. They tried the lock, tried the chain, tried the mounts then gave up and tried to remove the whole box.
Every time I left the ute somewhere I had to move all the stuff from the back and stuff it all into the cab so I could lock it up, putting it all back later so I could drive it again.
This is where my sick sense of humor kicked in and I started looking for ways to ‘use’ this extra attention.
I invented a new and novel to get rid of rubbish, you just pack it into a store bag with a few rocks for weight. The bigger the stores name the better, I had one from an expensive boutique coffee shop packed with two days carefully folded rubbish and a couple of rocks from the motel garden. Sure enough somewhere along my travels that day someone was kind enough to remove the bag from the back of the ute.

City people can be nice like that sometimes…



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Decisions decisions!

This is Roxy. (Ok, so I've Photoshopped it a bit for fun)



I'm the proud owner of two pure bred Fox Terriers, one lazy older bitch, Narla, and a much younger miniature female who has the killer instinct. I point out that I never encouraged her to hunt, in a country like Australia where even tiny spiders can kill you dead it’s not something you encourage your animals to do.
Roxy, the younger dog finds and kills more mice than most cats could manage, in fact the only thing she likes more than hunting is eating; this dog is very food oriented.
Yesterday while I was busy in the kitchen and the dogs were lying on their bed watching* me.
*code for hoping I’d drop something edible so they could be onto it like a lion on a staggering Wildebeest.

I saw nothing, I heard nothing, but when the small dog flew out of her bed and launched herself at the open Lounge room door I knew there had to be a mouse in the house. By the time I got there all I saw was her back legs hanging out from under my Jason Recliner, a scramble of claws and she was gone… under the chair.
I got to the chair and lifted the back to let her out but I knew from the sudden quiet that her job was already done.
She bounced out with her tail beating wildly, a dog biscuit in her mouth.
The mouse must have taken it from the dog bowl and scampered into the lounge to eat it… but was seen!
She’d chased the mouse and recovered her treat, but clearly the biscuit was much more important to her…and wasn’t she proud of her achievement, parading around for a few minutes before eating her catch.


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These are not my two but show perfectly what Foxies are about.





PS: don't let your kids name your animals...


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Damn!

I was out with the family enjoying a day out with the motorbikes, between us there are about 8 bikes of various sizes. Mine is a very nice, very new Yamaha TT, at just a year old and without a single mark on it, it is by far the nicest bike in the fleet.
For some reason it usually falls to me to take turns with the kids so they all get a chance to go on the bigger bikes, it was on one of these runs that it all went badly wrong.
Weaving around old cow stalls and over a vast area of succulent weed and concrete the front wheel dropped into a small gutter throwing us both off the bike in the blink of an eye.
One second I’m riding and the next I’m sliding across the concrete on my head and into a brick wall. My grand-daughter Miss8 got a skinned elbow and knee and bruises, here we are a few days later and she seems none the worse for it but I’m not quite so young, so I’m still hurting. I got a bit of concussion and if I’d gone to the doctors and had x-rays (like I should have) I might well have some shoulder damage too, and the leg feels kinda funny….
My beautiful bike has scratches and other damage, I’ve bought the new parts and I’ll do the replacement work myself.
It’s not the bike though, it’s just metal and plastic after all.
It’s the fact that Miss8 could have been seriously hurt that worries me.
After 35 years of riding I know what I’m doing and I was being so careful, too careful. This is not new stuff for me, if it had been one of the newer riders I’d have understood completely but for me it’s just not acceptable.



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