Archives for: 2010


Gin, Hens and Vaseline
Permalink

By Ruth D'Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

Being an earthy type, the Wildlife Gardener rarely gets embarrassed. But even I couldn’t help feeling slightly uneasy asking for a tub of Vaseline at my local chemist. Quite unnecessarily, I blurted out, ‘It’s for my hens’, and then wished I hadn’t . The assistant looked at me blankly and repeated, ‘For your hens?’ The words ‘Vaseline’ and ‘hens’ don’t often go together in a respectable sentence so I felt compelled to witter about rubbing Vaseline on combs and wattles to prevent frostbite. ‘You rub it on what?’ the assistant asked. My day was getting no better. ‘Comb and wattles. Those wobbly red things that hens have on the tops of their heads and dangling down under their beaks. As they are thin flesh they can get frostbitten when the weather turns icy. The way to prevent frostbite is to rub a layer of Vaseline onto these appendages, and, voilá, happy hens!’ ‘Right...’ said the assistant. I’m sure she wrapped my purchase in a brown paper bag on purpose.

Applying Vaseline to hens

Anyway, in our little pocket of the North Downs, we’ve had driving snow, wind and temperatures of -8°C. The town was mentioned on BBC national news as being ‘cut off’ by snow. La famille Wildlife Gardener can snuggle round the woodburner, but what about the von Quarks in their little Foresham ark at the end of the garden when it’s blowing a blizzard that even Captain Oates would be reluctant to step out in?

Read the rest...

Only one comment so far. Read it and add yours here!

Posted on 21st December 2009 at 9 08 pm
by The Wildlife Gardener
1889 views

Categories: Notes from a Wildlife Garden
PermalinkPermalink
Share |

The Ranger's Blog

The thoughts and writings of The Virtual Ranger, since 1995 the host and mascot of Naturenet, the UK's most popular independent environmental website; along with interjections from his real-life alter ego, Matthew Chatfield, and others. Featuring not only Naturenet and countryside related stuff, but, as on Naturenet, plenty of other material - more or less at random - that takes The Ranger's fancy. But you can be confident that soon enough he'll be rather sarcastic.

Search

Follow The Virtual Ranger on Twitter

Follow The Virtual Ranger on Twitter
Follow the Wildlife Gardener on Twitter Follow the Wildlife Gardener on Twitter

Top 10 most read articles

  1. Check out this massive wasp (141750 views) 
  2. Invasion of the giant hornets... or is it? (111316 views) 
  3. Check out this massive crab (87567 views) 
  4. Why do spiders come indoors in the autumn? (69308 views) 
  5. Spider vs. Bee... BBC vs. National Geographic  (61816 views) 
  6. Scientist: spitting worms have really weird sex (61047 views) 
  7. What is the purpose of wasps? (55169 views) 
  8. Gents, something in your pocket kills trees - and it's not a copper nail. (44041 views) 
  9. Wart seems to be the problem? The very strange papillomavirus (37555 views) 
  10. A fungus that looks like Britney Spears? (33739 views) 

Categories

Archives

Linkblog

Naturenet popular links

The Ranger's other blog favourites

Isle of Wight Blogs

Misc

Subscribe to The Rangers Blog here

Who's Online?

  • Guest Users: 8
Nature Blog Network