in vitro

Last month a fox broke into the duck house and killed all the five ducks including the rare and wonderful Mr Walters with his Easter bonnet.

 As is often the way with foxes it just killed them and actually didn't take any away to feed the youngsters which I thought was a shame. I blame myself as the duck house door didn't shut properly  so easy to get into. I haven't had a duck killed by a fox for eons unlike the ones killed by my neighbour's dog. There's not much space in the garden for burying five ducks, gone are the days of singing Kumbaya around the grave of a guinea pig. So I buried them in the hedgerows. No ashes to ashes.

Subsequently I put the five eggs I'd collected a few days previously and put them in an incubator. For 28 days I religiously turned the eggs many times in a day as the mother duck would have done so the embryos don't stick to the inside shell. I occasionally clucked at them. But the word clucking unless you are a hen means disapproval so perhaps that is why they decided not to hatch. I mean who wants to be disapproved of after being trapped inside an egg for twenty eight days? However the 28 days passed and as I'd suspected nothing hatched as I'm pretty sure they had not been fertilised. I'd never seen any frantic activity between the two males and their harem. 

Many years ago I bought six white Indian runner duck eggs off e bay and that is how Mr Walters came into the world. He was a one off. So now I've ordered half a dozen black runner eggs again from e bay and so begin the twenty eight days of nurturing.

Billie has been in our life for a year now. I can hardly believe how small and adorable she was and how this was before she learnt the joy of stealing mobile phones, digging up the garden and chewing all the cushions. I must try clucking at her.

So it's birds, birds, birds. This is the time of year for them to fall out of their nests and find their way to my sanctuary. Corvids. The crows, the rooks, the jackdaws, magpies but hardly ever a raven. At the moment I have two young rooks who still need to be hand fed and two (see below) who can feed themselves but are learning to fly before I open the door to the shade tunnel and let them go on their merry way. They have not yet packed their suitcases.

Rocket said he'd stay in his egg for twenty eight days but not to bother turning him. He'd like some light refreshment.

As I'm not writing much at the moment - (Writer's Block? )Pocket says he has a theory on writer's block. Writer's Block is neurotic inhibitions of productivity  he said. I think Edmund Bergler the Austrian psychiatrist  said that I told him. Well your writer's block is just an excuse he scoffed. You have flagging motivation. So easy to make excuses - just listen to yourself. So I looked at my excuses and thought he may have been right.

I didn't write yesterday

 because a swarm of bees

stole all my words 

and gave them to the Queen.

I didn't write yesterday 

because I couldn't find my pen

the magpie had stolen it.

I didn't write yesterday

 because there were not enough hours 

in the day.

Because I had nothing in my head

and nothing to say.

I didn't write yesterday

because I couldn't be bothered.

Pocket told me I should just take up accountancy instead.

Ashes

The incoming waves bring

the ashes onto the beach.

Brian was scattered here last week

but part of him still rests

in the rock pools

 with the hermit crabs

and the plastic bottles

and the child's shoe.

Most people aren't aware of Brian

after all a week is a long time

in the life of a wave.

By now some of Brian

is under a coconut tree

in the Seychelles,

is swimming with dolphins

in the Channel Isles.

He'd always wanted to travel.

On one beach part of him 

is in a sandcastle,

on another in a sandwich

and smeared around the lips

of a small boy.

Which once he was.

Linda Coggin.

PS perhaps Pocket has a point.