Mother Nature’s been at it again dear reader. She let go with a ripper the other week. The windows were rattling, leaves were leaping from branches like fearful children… looking to escape an angry parents wrath. It was so windy; birds were flying backwards while trying to make headway into the breeze. The weather bureau called it a “South Westerly”, but here at the resort we call it as it is…a giant case of flatulence.

During the onslaught, one of our graceful gum trees decided to capitulate. It ejected its entire upper third. It now looks most undignified, like a naked grandfather bewildered by the loss of his night gown. A few of the young slender brush box trees also decided death was preferable to punishment, and simply snapped at the base or leapt out of the ground.

It’s interesting though my dear audient, that even though mother nature occasionally behaves irrationally… apart from humans - no other single aspect of nature sulks. When mum gets the shits and lets fly with a wind ravaging fury, the next day the birds and back chasing bugs, the bugs are back eating our cabbage, and the cabbage is back turning sunlight into foliage. I see it often, the un-mistakeable ”never give up” attitude that we Aussies once proudly identified with.

I see it in our poultry. Time after time the snakes and goannas would take their eggs, or their chooklets, or both… but our chickens never sulked… each day they’d wake up at daylight and protest until the door to the poultry palace was unlocked. And eventually they triumphed and raised a new generation of feathered folk.

Last week an unwelcome dog rampaged through the flock, grasping one of the girls in his mouth – before running off with her for lunch. Wonder Bride heard the kafuffle and chased after the hound hurling abuse. Result… Dog ran off, but scruffy the chicken could not be found. A couple of hours later, scruffy came back sporting a slightly bloodied neck… but she didn’t hang around telling the other hens how horrible her life was. She didn’t complaint to the government and ask for special assistance… she laid an egg in her secret nest box, and then proceeded to spend the afternoon with rooster boy chasing lunch through the grass.

Another recent observation at the resort is the bee hive that nature mother dislodged the other night. The upper third of our now “very naked” tree trunk, used to be home to a prized colony of bees. If anyone’s going to be pissed off at having their house torn from its twenty meter high vantage point, and smashed to the ground, it would have to be a hive of bees. But you know what they were doing when I found them… they were rebuilding. Not one bee could be seen buzzing around telling the others how horrible their plight was. There was no bee media, no bee politicians asking for donations… no bee suicide bombers trying to make Mother Nature atone for her sins.

I felt for our little buzzy friends. I know how hard they work to pollinate crops, and how much our food chain depends on bees and insects for food production. At this point I attempted to impose a government upon them. I offered a fully funded public housing system, where I would provide free of charge accommodation. I had plans for a multi level bee dwelling, a bee city with blocks of bee townhouses all positioned side by side… for their comfort and safety of course…

There was going to have to be a levy, or a tax, or a GST… just to help with the ongoing costs of such an onerous enterprise. But as a benevolent dictator I was happy to defer the first payment until after a suitable resettling period had past. One spoon of honey for me, one spoon for the bee hive… One spoon of honey for me… another for the hive… One desert spoon of honey for me, a teaspoon of honey for the hive. After all… we are in hard economic times, these bee hotels don’t come cheap, and a government needs funds if you want infrastructure spending…

It seems however, our resident bee hive has preferred a life of freedom - rather than one of enslavement. (the image above is the other end of the same log) Perhaps that’s why our own choice for government this last few weeks seemed so indecisive, and why the sulking and whinging continues…

Freedom didn’t seem to be one of the options on my ballot paper…

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