Monday 4 October 2010

Feng Shui and Headless Ducks in the Vegetable Patch

A lot of people put the lid down on their toilets. Many of them do this is to prevent their wealth going down the drain which is what Feng Shui suggests. Others do it so that rats do not come up through the sewers and attack you in your sleep.

Both seem pretty good reasons to not risk it. One less likely than the other but in either case one would feel pretty stupid to suffer that fate when all it takes is a little extra effort.

So… what I want to know is… is this draining a constant nefarious thing? Is it best to slam that lid back down as fast as possible to save a second’s worth of wealth upon completion of the paperwork? Is the horrific draining power at its peak at a particularly time eg just as you’re flushing… is that when it’s most imperative to have the lid down? Is that in fact the only time its important? Does it matter how many times one uses the loo in a day? How angry should one be with visitor’s who have no respect for one’s hard-earned loot and leave that lid up after abluting?

And is this all applicable only in one’s own house… what about out and about, should one put that lid down before one flushes or does a toilet’s power to leech your wealth apply whenever one is near one? And on a national scale could this explain why all those 3rd world countries with their open-air long-drop latrines are so poverty-stricken?

If anyone has any clarification on these matters most important please enlighten me…

I know a rudimentary search on some wiki internetti spaghetti page would answer at least the half serious ones but I’m enjoying letting information come to me randomly via the folks that I know… its also an around-a-bout laziness!

On another matter, yesterday morning I went to the veggie patch in my back garden to rescue the last courgette of the season (of 2 – but they’re alarmingly huge) from predator snails and early frosts. Aside from this magnificent tuber I found a small headless duck. One wing separated off to one side. Over the years I’ve found many a dead pigeon splashed in feathers, the victim’s of various cats. This duck carcass was especially gruesome as I’d not seen its kind. Black, soggy from overnight rain, intact but for its head having been ripped off. Its legs had an appearance of rubberyness to them. As if they’d feel like jelly to the touch. It made me feel squeamish, so much so that I just left it there and went to work.

I was thinking about how to deal with it. My first instinct was to give it a decent burial, this being what my Mum and I would do in years past. Or should I abandon sentiment and throw it in the bin? Why was I questioning this… The natural order seems that it’d be sensible to bury it. That way it could give its bits to the worms and plants in a decent fertilising way. So should I bury it in my vegetable patch in preparation for next year’s crops? That way too, perhaps I’d have the practical experience of discovering just how long bones last in the ground. But we don’t bury the body parts from the animals we eat. We don’t add our meaty bits to the compost heap… is it dangerous for some reason? Or is it because meat in the compost heap also attracts rats and then these godless sewer beasts may do anything to feed that newfound taste!

I have don’t fear rats in my garden though – something far more dreadful. You see, this evening when I returned and went out to deal with said dead duck. It was gone but not its wing. In the dark… imagine the chills to that crawled my spine, knowing that with only one wing, that headless duck with its soggy claws could not have got far… I only hope it’s the snails that suffer its vengeance.

Not much of the above would make for suitable photographic support so instead here is a picture of the courgette I rescued. And a photo taken at Burning Man that shows a planet of courgette type entities.

By the skies above I so truly hope life finds you all well!

Much love