... and the cog jumped over the moon

Steady on there Jock, help's coming

Now we are not cattle barons, not by a long shot, in fact one calf and three dogs do not really constitute a station. But that does not stop Larry and Gerald from dreaming of days gone by. Larry certainly did do a lot of droving in his day, before age and his back drove him into retirement, but Gerald - well we don't know where fact ends and fiction starts with him. Still, we kid along with him. Gerald skites that once he was the greatest rodeo rider that ever rode the Queensland stage, the only photo he has of him on a horse is in his mother's front yard. The photo is one of a series which includes all his mother's grandchildren on the same horse. - very tame indeed, but again, we kid him along. Not that Gerald is without the gear, why he has everything a cowboy could want in the clothing department. No saddle, but a belt buckle just as big.
Gerald boasts of his days of fame, impressing all the women, but the only time the women swoon for him now is when he pulls something red and six inches long out of his trousers at the bar - a $20 note. Recently he tried to put a new handle on the axe. Three days later, he finished the task, having filed the handle down too loose, put the head on upside down and used eight metal wedges to hold it on. Needless to say, we ordered another handle and snuck it on when he went fishing.
Now Gerald and Larry are great exponents of the art of fishing. But their techniques are totally opposite. Larry will shoot a crew, put it in the fishtrap, and an hour later have thirty large bream. Gerald, not to be out done, uses legs of lamb, half rumps, a pack of pig's ribs, or any other piece of meat that is at least two pounds and costs over ten dollars. So far, his catch for the year totals four baby turtles, all of which he gave to the children to put in our fish pond, and all of which have since escaped and made their way back to the river.
But back to our calf. Our dogs are all heelers. Not that we are trying to be a cattle station, it's just that we are fond of the breed, and we have the room for them to run. Now, until we were presented with the calf last week, the only time our dogs had seen cattle, was at a distance, travelling along the open road. Ohh they would bark, and you could see their tiny dog brains saying "I know that is not a dog, and I am supposed to something with it, but until I work out what, I'll just bark". So the calf came as a complete enigma to them. Suddenly, they had a real live cow. Worse, the calf was used to noisy dogs, and given the way it was raised, it thought it was a dog. Confused? Stay with me on this.
So now we have a calf that thinks it's a dog, but only eats grass and vegetables. In response, the dog also thinks it is a dog, even though it 'moos' instead of 'barking'. So what do our dogs do? Well here is what appears to be the dog of dogs (after all, it is huge in the eyes of a heeler), so the only thing to do is follow its' lead. Now we have dogs trying to graze on grass. Now I know that feeding beef to cattle can give them 'mad cow disease', but grass to dogs? Who knows! Our dogs certainly cannot get much crazier then they are.
At least our fruit and vegetables are on track, except the limes and the kumquats. I think I miscalculated the graft site, because I am getting lemons on some of the branches. Oh dear, a cow that thinks it's a dog, dogs that think they are cows, limes that think they are lemons, and Gerald who thinks he's a cowboy. God help us when the chooks and geese arrive next week, because I think I am crazy!
Till next despatch, yours in the sheltered workshop,
JOCK ASSIMWE