Old McDonald had no more hens because a dog ate them

It's New Years Eve and we spent a lovely last day of 2011 visiting a most lovely couple who may have work (of a sort?) for me, was incredibly inviting, went to the beach and picked up loads more shells, driftwood, and sunburn, and finished off at a salt-water river fishing with my brother-in-law and his fiancee.

Of course, I won't write more about this or post the pretty pictures because when we got home and Phillip went to lock up our remaining chicken and our lovely rooster, he found feathers. Everywhere. And then saw a dog with something in it's mouth. He chased it a bit, came back and got me, and we went searching for it with his block buster in hand, the cat trailing after us like the loyal little girl she is, a flash light, and a barrel full of anger.

We didn't' find it, of course, but we're now certain it was the dog that killed everything, and came back for more. Not sure if it belongs to anyone though. But if it comes on our (technically our landlords) property, we're fully within our rights to kill it if it's harassing our animals or us.

My brother-in-law? The hunter? He really liked our ducks. He thinks our rooster and our chickens were pretty nice as far as chickens go  (our rooster gets compliments from everyone who visits, he's so massive and majestic). He was ready to shoot anything here before we found out for sure it was a dog. Guess who's coming up for nachos tomorrow.

Photos of pretty day out to come tomorrow.

Happy New Year!

I'm glad I was wearing gloves

Yesterday, I found my first live scorpion while cleaning out the flower beds.

It's only a very small one, and after a little Googeling, I found out that there's only one type of scorpion that lives in Tasmania: The Wood Scorpion.

And, thankfully, they're not like the kind in America, where smaller equals more deadly. Smaller, here, just means it's smaller. They can sting you, of course, and it's supposed to hurt like heck for a while, but nothing more. Unless you're allergic to the venom. This was just one of the sites I checked out, if you're at all interested in some extremely basic scorpion info: http://museumvictoria.com.au/discoverycentre/infosheets/scorpion-facts-and-fallacies/

And, this week, I also cooked my first kangaroo. On our wood heater.

It cooked for about 4 hours, lightly covered (I don't have a lid that fits our largest frying pan), and was still a little too tough for my tastes. It did, however, taste quite delicious.

I cooked it in a few tablespoons of olive oil seasoned with salt and pepper. Threw in one enormous fresh garlic clove, roughly chopped, three onions cut into eighths, and later added some water to it so it could simmer away nicely. Just before serving, I mixed in a little flour so that the juice would thicken up and stick to the meat in a gravy-like fashion.

Served with fresh mashed potatoes (moonlight potatoes are now my favourite kind) and steamed broccoli and cauliflower. Again, the roo was kind of tough, but I got some nice reviews from my husband's grandparents (who were over for supper) and my husband.

Hippity Hopp- BANG!

The kangaroo is Australia's national animal.

A wallaby is very similar to a kangaroo. In fact, most people who aren't from here probably would just think they're small kangaroos. And I've even heard residents interchange the name.

Down here in Tasmania, the wallabies are about as prolific as rabbits. In fact, I've seen more wallaby road kill than I have rabbits. And they eat everything. You can't have a garden without fencing it off or the wallabies will eat it all. And apparently they eat up pasture land that is much needed for all the beef and dairy cows here.

So, I've been told, you can pretty much go out in the bush any time of the year, day or night, and shoot as many of the little (or sometimes somewhat large) beasts as you want. My brother-in-law (the one who loves to shoot/hunt) has gone out and gotten up to one-hundred in one night. And I've seen photos of his pick-up (or "ute") full of 30+ dead wallabies.

And of course, you can eat them.

I've seen kangaroo steaks (on the mainland, the kangaroos numbers are becoming a bit of a problem as well) for about $23AUD for a rather tiny steak. And, like I said, a wallaby is a lot like a kangaroo.

And it tastes pretty good. I've been begging my brother-in-law to go out and get us a big one, so I can try my hand at cooking some wallaby stew or lasagne, and just to go with all the deer we now have stacked in our little freezer. You know, stock up on some wild game.

Yesterday, he got one.