Archive for the ‘Animals’ Category
I was down in Kaş this afternoon enjoying the warmth when a big cloud came over the horizon to sit right on top of me. Just as I pushed the door to the bank to pay my monthly Social Security Health payment my phone rang. I saw that it was a friend of mine in my village and when I answered she had bad news for me. My white dog, Molly, was round at her house and had been chased there by a very angry village woman shouting and screaming.
Dogs that upset the local domestic animals don’t last long here, so I was dismayed to hear that Molly had been caught red handed, more correctly yellow mouthed by the owner of chickens. It seems she had discovered where the chickens laid their eggs and had been seen with yolk dripping from her mouth. Normally she looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and won’t touch anything edible in my house unless I first put it in her dinner bowl or physically give it to her.
She has made a serious error of judgement this time.
Luckily the woman who owns the chickens (her name is Safiye) is a neighbour and friend of mine and I have bought some eggs to replace the ones eaten. I don’t know how many Molly ate but I bought a couple of dozen so hopefully that will placate Safiye and compensate her for the eggs.
Molly is going to have to have some training in order to teach her to leave the eggs alone, I don’t know how I’m going to do it, hopefully I can find some ideas or lessons on the internet but if not I’ll just have to come up with something myself. Wish me luck.
While I’m talking about dogs I thought I’d update the story last week about Aslan. I took him to the vet in Kalkan a few miles away for some tests and it was found that he has a disease called Leish Maniasis. This is a particularly nasty disease that dogs can suffer from and if not treated it can kill them. All the symptoms that he had are typical of the disease and Hasan the vet had no trouble in diagnosing him, he even had a little blood test specifically designed to confirm it. That was very disappointing but I bought the necessary medication from the pharmacy and started him on it then took him back to my neighbours and showed them how to administer the pills. There is sufficient medication to last for a month and I’ll get some more, it’s not expensive, when this lot runs out. We’ll just have to wait and see how he does.
Had another visit to the Greek island of Meis the other day, a lovely little harbour with a villagey feel to it on an equally lovely little island. I was a bit disappointed that the duty free shop had no brandy so I had to make do with a bottle of Glenfiddich single malt whiskey, poor me! As usual I also got two 400g bars of Cadburys Whole Nut chocolate.
When the Meis fishermen bring some fish back the restaurant owners usually clean them on the harbour side, I was going to say harbour wall but there is no wall, the road just stops and the water is next, you can easily take a wrong step and get very wet if you’re not careful. Well this day Angelos was cleaning and filleting a big fish and throwing the innards and spine into the water. I have often seen a big turtle swim up and eat the bits but this day two of them came and started to push each other out of the way to get the bits of fish. It was quite a startling sight to see the two of them performing all sorts of diving, wheeling and flying right next to where I was standing, like an aquatic ballet in three dimensions. I hadn’t taken my good camera with me so these photographs are only from my phone camera, apologies for the quality.
For the past few years my sleep at night has been disturbed by my cat Stanley. He lies around the house most of the day and only stirs himself to stroll the few paces to the food and water bowls to keep body and soul together. Yes, I believe animals have souls, how could they give us so much pleasure if they didn’t?
Stanley likes to have a big feed at about two in the morning and then go out to check on what’s happening in the garden. To go out someone has had to let him out of the window, me. Then about two hours later, after he has chased all the little furry and scaly creatures back into their hiding place and maybe had a bit of a fight with another cat (the black and white murderer) he jumps up and hangs onto the window frame and scratches at the window to be let back in, me again. Well I was telling a lady friend about this and she said that she had fitted a new cat flap because her cat was bringing his friends in through the old one that didn’t discriminate and let all and sundry in. The new cat flap had a device that recognised a device on the cat’s collar and kept gate crashers out. Would I like to have the old one, she asked. What a nice offer I thought and said yes please.
The cat flap has been installed in the door at the front leading onto the patio and Stanley is slowly getting used to it. He doesn’t mind coming into the house through it from outside but going out through it seems to give him trouble. He sits and bats the flap for about ten minutes with his paw trying to make up his mind or gather the courage to push his way through it. The flap itself is transparent so he can see if there is anything scary hanging around outside waiting to pounce on him but he still goes through this routine. He was doing it the other day and I happened to have my new phone handy, it has a camera and I snapped him. Here he is:
I was quite happy with one dog but since Wilf’s departure Minnie has seemed to be missing the company of another dog. When I’ve been away she has been going up the road a couple of miles to visit some friends who have five or six dogs. They didn’t mind and I was happy to fetch her back each time but the root cause wasn’t being addressed. I’d been thinking of getting another dog and had my ear bent a bit to take a puppy but I preferred to have an older dog, in the end I took in this one because she had been abused by someone who had hacked her tail off. I’ll refrain from giving my opinion of what should be done to abusers of animals.
I have called her Molly after my niece’s baby daughter, she’s about 12 or 15 months old and is keen on chewing things, mats, shoes etc. In fact one of my rubber gardening shoes has gone missing altogether, I can’t find it anywhere so I hope she hasn’t eaten it.
My veranda faces west and while it’s nice to able to sit in the sun, it’s impossible to use that space in July and August because it’s just too hot. I’ve been thinking about having a frame with vines growing over it for a few years and yesterday the first part of the plan was completed when the frame was erected.
While they were putting it up I was a bit concerned about it. It looked a bit stark and angular but I know it will soften as soon as something is growing over it. Ramazan, a neighbour and local steel fabricator, brought all the necessary stuff and, along with his brother, started the job about 9.30. He asked me if it was too early for me, bless him he doesn’t realise the dogs have me awake at 5.30 every morning, and before that quite often. Recently Bayram’s big dog has been baying nearly all night at just about everything that moves and because I have my bedroom window open at night I’ve not been getting much sleep, I’m getting fed up with it.
When it was finished I started to paint the frame green (a vine frame is called a çardak in Turkish) but only had a small amount of paint left from a previous job. Tomorrow I’ll get some more and some thinners and gloves to keep the paint off me. I’m very messy when it comes to painting and always get it all over my hands, most of my clothes and even in my hair sometimes. This morning some of the green paint was on the side of the bath, how did that get there?
Once the painting is done there is some shading material to put over it to provide shade until the vines grow, the legs will need concrete put round them to secure it for the winter winds. The second part of the plan is to remove the wooden veranda, level the area from the house foundation to the outer limit of the frame with sand and then pave it to make a big patio with the same flat stone I’m using for the drive. The level will be about eight or nine inches lower than the veranda so it will need a step down from the house too.
My eyes are still improving and I’m so glad I had the laser surgery done it’s making a big difference to my life. I had a check-up a week after the surgery and there is a tiny bit of astigmatism left but if it doesn’t rectify itself after a month I can have it done under the guarantee.
To continue from my last post, the bat was hanging from my bedroom ceiling so I left it there with the door and windows shut to stop Stanley the cat taking too much of an interest in it and I went down to Kaş for breakfast with some friends at Küçük Çakıl Plajı (Small Pebble Beach). It really is small too, the actual beach is only about five or six metres wide.
The breakfast at the Derya Beach Restaurant is an excellent creation consisting of lots of little portions of typical Turkish breakfast foods all washed down with copious quantities of tea. Here is what it looks like…
There was also a basket of home made sweet bread buns which came later.
The Küçük Çakıl Beach area at the eastern end of the town is where most of the hotels are situated. There are only two big hotels though, the majority of accommodation in Kas is provided by smaller, boutique hotels like these.
The western end of the town has more small hotels and pensions which cater to backpackers and those with a more limited budget.
When I returned from breakfast the bat hadn’t moved so I left it alone for the rest of the day. I’d been invited to dinner with some friends in the village so in the evening, before I went, I opened the bedroom windows in the hope that it would find it’s way out after the sun had gone down. I also hoped I didn’t end up with a colony of bats in the bedroom! After a very nice meal and some good conversation I got back home to find the bat gone. Success! I hope it was none the worse for it’s experience.
Walking up the goat track near my house the other morning I thought about how many times I’ve wanted to come up here. My neighbours , the çobanlar (goatherders), make their winter camp just up the road from my house and it sits astride the track so I’ve never wanted to disturb them by bringing the dogs through. Recently though, their camp has been abandoned for the summer and just the frames of their shelters are left standing like so many skeletons. Quite eerie.
They have taken their goats up to the yayla, the mountain pastures, for the hot period of the year. There is more to eat and it is cooler up there. Past their camp is a track to a large open area with a big tree in the middle of it.
You can see it on Google Earth and with the naked eye from the top of the mountain at Phellos. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to take the dogs for a walk there.
This fallen tree looks reminiscent of elephants to me, the shapes and greyness of it create that kind of feeling I think.
This rock with a hole eroded in it caught my eye too.
Kurabiye is a kind of small sweet bread similar in appearance to a Hot Cross Bun in England. The texture is firmer and they’re not quite as sweet but the new bakery in Kas makes very nice examples. As I’ve mentioned previously Hanife’s milk is so creamy that I let it stand to separate then skim off the cream. Well this afternoon I had Kurabiye with whipped cream and strawberry jam, extremely indulgent of me but it was lovely.
I had cream left over and later in the evening I had a look in the fridge and found some strawberries that I had forgotten about for a few days. I felt very guilty for about a nanosecond and then thoroughly enjoyed them. The strawberries were beautiful, really tasty.
A strange sort of shuffling sound woke me in the middle of last night. When my cat, Stanley, gets something in his ear he shakes his head rapidly and it makes a sort of soft shuffling clapping sound and that was the closest I could come to the sound that had woken me. But this time it kept repeating and going on for longer and longer. I sat up in bed, turned on the bedside light and saw a bat fluttering around obviously trying to find a way out of the bedroom. The windows had been open till about nine last evening and the bat must have come in looking for moths or maybe even for a place to roost. I opened a window for a few minutes but the bat didn’t find it and I didn’t want to invite mosquitoes into the house so I closed it and we both went back to sleep.
This morning I looked around and eventually found it behind a curtain, as I tried to photograph it away it flew up to the ceiling. I don’t want to chase it out into the sunlight now so I’ll let it stay there and leave the window open again this evening in the hope that it finds it’s way out and back to it’s normal roost. It’s a dear little thing and they fly around outside a lot in the evening at this time of year, there are thousands of big moths around so they must find food quite easily. This one looks very well fed doesn’t he?
If he doesn’t find his own way out this evening I’ll have to try and catch him but catching a creature as quick and agile as this without hurting it won’t be easy.
I’m going down to Kas for breakfast at the Derya Beach Restaurant with some friends this morning so I’ll post a couple of photographs of that later and let you know how I got on with the bat.
Going to the veterinary clinic in Fethiye yesterday Alf was asleep most of the way. He has been holding his back left leg up for about a week so I thought it was time to get him looked at by a professional. That sounds as though I don’t care about him but he often limps on one of his back legs and usually after a few days rest and a walk in the mountains he recovers and is fine so if I can’t find an obvious injury I don’t worry for the first few days. I think he probably strains himself sometimes jumping over the fence or playing with the other dogs. Just to confound me as soon as we got to Fethiye and got out of the car at the vet’s place he started walking normally and didn’t show any signs of limping to the vet.
Two good things came out of the visit though so I was glad I took him. The first thing was that when we walked in the reception staff asked if I had brought him to have his hair clipped. Well I hadn’t made an appointment but it sounded like a good idea because the spiky seeds won’t stick to him then and won’t be such a problem to get out, so I said yes please. I asked about seeing the vet, he was busy looking at a puppy that had been run over by a car so they took details of what to be looked at and said come back in an hour. I went and had breakfast at a nearby restaurant and then did a bit of shopping.
When I went back to the vet I walked up to the desk and asked how Alf was and they pointed at a dog sitting waiting behind me, it was Alf! I had walked straight past him, he looked so different with his hair all gone and you could see the markings on the front of his chest that I’d never seen before. I hadn’t recognised him and I was still unsure if it was him until he turned towards me and I saw his left eye and then I knew.
The vet came and had a chat and showed me a long grass seed that he’d taken out of his ear. So this was the second good thing, it must have been in there a long time and I had thought that the brown stuff in his ear was caused by ear mites and had been treating him for that. I was given some ointment with a long soft applicator nozzle to squeeze into his ear every day for the next five days, I tried it this morning and managed to get some in but he doesn’t like it. Of course the vet was able to do it easily because Alf had been sedated I think, and things always look easy when an expert does them.
Anyway here’s a picture of Alf with his haircut and the inset shows him before, quite a difference eh?
And his leg? Well the vet said to make sure he doesn’t do anything too energetic for a few days and then start taking him for walks, exactly what I usually do so I’m glad I’m not doing anything wrong. Oh, and he’s not limping so much this morning and doesn’t seem to be whining so much but it’s early days yet, I’ll let you know how he progresses.
Taking the big rubbish up to the tip in my pick-up is always a bit of an adventure for me. First there is the possibility of getting a puncture in one of the tyres because of all the broken glass there and then there is the conversation that I know will happen when they see me. It’s nice and the people up there are always welcoming, like everyone in Turkey really, their hospitality is legendary.
I took the first load up on Monday and had a chat with Mehmet, Ekrem and his boy. They come from Diyarbakır in the east of Turkey. I find these guys to be very helpful and always ready to smile so I count them among my friends here. Mehmet often says a few words to me in English, imagine a guy working in a rubbish tip in UK being able to speak Turkish eh? I took the remaining stuff up there today. The roofing material that I took was being put aside to use on the roofs of their own place. They build their own shanty type places with what they find amongst the rubbish or people give them so they were happy for me to bring it.
When I drove back past their shacks the children shouted to me so I stopped and took a couple of photos. Here they are, the little one always makes me laugh, she stands there so sure of herself.
Actually I had tried earlier in the day to take the stuff to the tip but was thwarted in my plan by some of the goatherders who were taking their herd up to the summer pastures in the mountains. They were all over the road and I couldn’t be bothered to disturb them by trying to push through, I wasn’t in any hurry so I went back home and had lunch.
Everyone in Kaş is working hard getting things ready for the tourist season and the new marina in is steadily taking shape. There are more pontoons ready now and work on the buildings is progressing quickly. There is a new road by-passing the marina too.
At this time of year the broom plant is in full bloom. There are fantastic patches of this plant all over the place and their wonderful yellow flowers are almost blinding in their intensity.
In the garden this morning having a wander round with the dogs before I started work I noticed this strange-looking clump of stuff on a branch of a juniper bush.
It is made up of a lot of caterpillars of the Oak Processionary Moth all grouped together. They are called processionary because when they walk along the ground they go nose to tail like elephants and their procession can be a couple of metres long. It looks as though they like to sleep together in a big bunch too, there must be some sort of benefit to them from doing this. They used to be found around the Middle East and Mediterranean but in recent years they have colonised parts of northern Europe and UK too.
All those little hairs on them can break off in the event of an attack by a bird or other creature intent on eating them and if ingested they are highly poisonous. The hairs can also float on the breeze and if inhaled by humans can cause very nasty symptoms and can even be fatal if they trigger an allergic reaction. There are reports of dogs losing parts of their tongues and even being killed by getting the hairs in their mouths. I was worried for my dogs because they could easily go sniffing around and come across a procession of them so I gave the bunch of them a liberal dosing with insecticide. If they aren’t dead by tomorrow I will put on some rubber gloves and a spray mask and collect them in a little plastic bag to be flushed down the loo.
I mentioned previously that the goat-herder’s dog comes into the garden, well here he is with Wilfred standing over him to let him know who is top dog around here.
The goat-herder is disgusted with him because he lets my dogs jump all over him, even little Minnie gives his ears a good ragging now and then.
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