It is Tuesday night, three days ago, the night before an exam... This happens, true story..
My four year old niece decides she wants to play with the quails. I had bought my mother a pair as part of her suburban dream of starting some kind of farm in her garden. Anyway my niece inadvertently releases a quail into the garden which then takes an instant dislike to any efforts to catch it, and hops the eight foot high wall into the neighbours garden. My brother, father of the now crying child jumps the over the wall, meanwhile the quail finds his new garden is not suitable for its taste, probably a lack of storage and decides to fly, magnificently for a quail, the twenty feet over the alleyway into another garden which is perfect quail habitat. Four foot high weeds, brambles, nettles, grass, bricks and an outdoor toilet that would look good in trainspotting. Que an hour later after much careful poking, swearing, scratching, shaking twigs and false alarms, where I stalked and caught a dried up plant that looked suspiciously like a quail. Dammit.
All hope had faded until my brother poked the quail up its bum and it took off again, clearing another eight foot high brick wall and into another garden. I started to sense a pattern developing here that quails can fly and they can fly better than I can climb walls in my bare feet. Within seconds we are perched on top of the wall trying to see where it went, at which point the neighbours two dogs appear. They are mental, they are angry. So angry that my bottom hole relaxes slightly. Oh fiddlesticks, that's going to be one tasty quail sized snack for a dog.. Then a woman appeared and visions of having to explain myself to the police flashed through my mind. Surprisingly the woman who lived there didn't appear to be alarmed by one guy stood on her wall brandishing a children's rock pool net and another waving a broom and gibbering nonsensically with what only can be described as a gingery-brown afro, (I had washed my hair earlier that day, but didn't condition it, and now I'm paying for that with a beautiful, but inexplicable hairstyle, but I digress)... Two minutes later and the quail found himself in the back of the net and back in the run, the niece was suitably shouted at and I'm left with an arm full of scratches, an afro full of twigs and one pissed off quail...
My four year old niece decides she wants to play with the quails. I had bought my mother a pair as part of her suburban dream of starting some kind of farm in her garden. Anyway my niece inadvertently releases a quail into the garden which then takes an instant dislike to any efforts to catch it, and hops the eight foot high wall into the neighbours garden. My brother, father of the now crying child jumps the over the wall, meanwhile the quail finds his new garden is not suitable for its taste, probably a lack of storage and decides to fly, magnificently for a quail, the twenty feet over the alleyway into another garden which is perfect quail habitat. Four foot high weeds, brambles, nettles, grass, bricks and an outdoor toilet that would look good in trainspotting. Que an hour later after much careful poking, swearing, scratching, shaking twigs and false alarms, where I stalked and caught a dried up plant that looked suspiciously like a quail. Dammit.
All hope had faded until my brother poked the quail up its bum and it took off again, clearing another eight foot high brick wall and into another garden. I started to sense a pattern developing here that quails can fly and they can fly better than I can climb walls in my bare feet. Within seconds we are perched on top of the wall trying to see where it went, at which point the neighbours two dogs appear. They are mental, they are angry. So angry that my bottom hole relaxes slightly. Oh fiddlesticks, that's going to be one tasty quail sized snack for a dog.. Then a woman appeared and visions of having to explain myself to the police flashed through my mind. Surprisingly the woman who lived there didn't appear to be alarmed by one guy stood on her wall brandishing a children's rock pool net and another waving a broom and gibbering nonsensically with what only can be described as a gingery-brown afro, (I had washed my hair earlier that day, but didn't condition it, and now I'm paying for that with a beautiful, but inexplicable hairstyle, but I digress)... Two minutes later and the quail found himself in the back of the net and back in the run, the niece was suitably shouted at and I'm left with an arm full of scratches, an afro full of twigs and one pissed off quail...
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