Workshop pets?

[Terry McGee]

I thought I saw a tail disappearing under my stock of flute timbers down in the workshop. Sure enough, caught the interloper this morning, outside the workshop but trying to get back in. A medium-sized blue-tonged lizard, in rude good health. My goodness they can squirm! This is just a stock image to save me loading one, but looks very similar:



I'll be interested to see what happens when he bumps into one of the cats!

Anything unusual in your workshop?

[Nanohedron]

My goodness they can squirm!

So it raised a skink?

[Terry McGee]

Heh heh, my guess it has devoured many! It feels very well packed, and you'd have to have eaten an awful lot of grubs and insects to achieve that. We do see (and hear) the occasional frog, but I don't think you'd run a decent-sized blue-tongue long on the occasional frog. But skinks - very small lizards - are everywhere here. I come across their eggs while gardening (some mothers!). The local kookaburras dine on them routinely.

Some comforting folklore is that bluetongues keep snakes away. Clearly nobody has mentioned that to our local python who wanders by nonchalantly from time to time. But, I have to admit, haven't seen a red-belly black for a while now!

[Geoffrey Ellis]

I recently got a batch of chicks that have grown into full-sized, egg-laying hens. One day, one of then hens wandered into my shop. She did a circuit, then left. The next day she came back and did the same. The next day she was waiting for me outside the door, so I let her in and she spent a lot of time just wandering around pecking at things, scratching in the dust and (to my horror) drinking out of a tray full of water and ebonite slurry (the remains of some wet sanding!). It's theoretically "food safe", though I expect it tastes like a charred car tire. She seems to like it, because she has quenched her thirst that way on a few occasions before I could interfere. Out of twenty chickens, she is the only one who has come anywhere near my shop, so it's quite an oddity. I call her "Shop Hen", just to keep it simple. My wife called her Chopin, but pronounced with a strong French accent it sounds just like "Shop Hen" and is a bit more high-brow .

As time has gone on, she has become a regular visitor, sometimes actually sleeping in the sawdust under my wood lathe as I stand there working! She'll perch all sorts of places where she doesn't belong and basically hang out being sociable. Very odd. For you chicken fanciers out there, she is a Welsummer. And yes, that is her perching on an in-progress flute...

[Terry McGee]

OMG, Geoffrey, I'll have to admit being upstaged bigtime! That is gorgeous, and I love the Shop-hen/Chopin juxtashuffle. I can't see my blue-tongue balancing on a flute no matter how much effort I put into training.

We have chooks too (chickens internationally, chooks in Australia) but have had to curtail their freedoms to prevent them stripping the garden.

Pulled about 2 lbs (1 kilo) of spuds today from one plant. Reminds me of the time I stood behind an Irish fellow in a food queue at Gormanston in Meath, at a Comhaltas event back in the seventies, and he kept asking for more potatoes. I counted 11 when he left the counter....

[Geoffrey Ellis]

We have chooks too (chickens internationally, chooks in Australia) but have had to curtail their freedoms to prevent them stripping the garden.

Yes, this is our current dilemma as well! I built a "chicken tractor" to use strategically (at some point) but I'm not ready to deploy it. So we had to fence our garden area. They are endlessly diverting, however. Chickens are just funny and we spend a lot of time watching their antics. My wife observed that they kept wanting to hang out on our back porch, so she put a nest out there. Suddenly, they all wanted to use it for egg--laying! So she put three more in a row. Now, when we let them out of the coop, they all come running up there to lay their eggs. Sometimes I look out the window and see all of the nests full of hens and it makes egg collection very easy. My mother-in-law argued that we'd get fresher eggs by putting the nests in the kitchen, but there is a line I find them amusing, but I don't think having them in the house is a good idea! They already come to the back door to demand treats...

[Katharine]

I like both of your workshop pets! (Though I'm not sure if they'd like each other...)

[Terry McGee]

Heh heh, animal interactions are unpredictable. Our bumptious young cat thought he was going to have it all over our chickens. A couple of sharp pecks to the nose forced him to re-evaluate. Detente would probably be the appropriate descriptor for the current relationship.

I was meeting a new neighbour recently, as she walked her two Siberian cats in the front garden. As we talked, the inquisitive cats discovered a young blue-tongue lizard among the plants. Our reactions varied:

Me: Quick, save the blue-tongue.
She: Quick, save my cats.
Blue-tongue (edging forward, blue tongue darting about, sampling the air): Hey, we could be friends...
Cats (backing off): What the hell is that?

[tstermitz]

Are dust bunnies pets?

(Do they even call them dust bunnies in other lands?)

[Nanohedron]

IIRC Jerry Freeman had a shop mouse.

[Terry McGee]

My workshop also provides maternity services to mud-dauber wasps. My racks of flute timbers lie just inside the door, which I usually leave open for ventilation in our balmy clime. (Yes, there is a fly screen, but hey, I'm lazy, aren't I.) So the occasional mud-dauber finds its way into the stash of timbers, finds the bored pieces to its liking, clogs up one end with mud (how many trips must that take?) lays its eggs, pokes in one or more paralysed spiders for the larvae to feed on, clogs up the other end with mud (more trips!) and shoots through, job done.

Some time later (days? weeks? months? next summer!) I hear a buzzing sound emanating from the stash, as the young wasp chews its way out. Needless to say, when going on to make a flute, I give preference to pieces of wood I can see through or that have a break in the mud at one end!

They do sting if cornered, but are not aggressive. Fortunately for them, neither am I.

[Geoffrey Ellis]

My workshop also provides maternity services to mud-dauber wasps. My racks of flute timbers lie just inside the door, which I usually leave open for ventilation in our balmy clime. (Yes, there is a fly screen, but hey, I'm lazy, aren't I.) So the occasional mud-dauber finds its way into the stash of timbers, finds the bored pieces to its liking, clogs up one end with mud (how many trips must that take?) lays its eggs, pokes in one or more paralysed spiders for the larvae to feed on, clogs up the other end with mud (more trips!) and shoots through, job done.

Some time later (days? weeks? months? next summer!) I hear a buzzing sound emanating from the stash, as the young wasp chews its way out. Needless to say, when going on to make a flute, I give preference to pieces of wood I can see through or that have a break in the mud at one end!

They do sting if cornered, but are not aggressive. Fortunately for them, neither am I.

I like the live and let live attitude! I once lived in an old house with a nest of yellow jackets living in the porch wall. My roommates and I used to sit out there with the wasps coming and going, perching on the table, investigating what we were drinking, and generally cohabiting in peace. They were used to us and vice versa.

The other day I was standing in my shop talking on the phone and a very large squirrel trotted straight through the door, crossed the floor and stopped about three feet from me and just sat there, staring me out of countenance. It seems it came in specifically to stare me down and make me forget what I was saying to my friend. I was reluctant to chase it away, simply because it seemed unusually muscular and confident. I didn't fancy my chances. Eventually it left, leaving me questioning all of my assumptions about squirrels.

[Nanohedron]

Eventually it left, leaving me questioning all of my assumptions about squirrels.

Not to derail the topic, but where I live, lore is that you don't want to actually catch an untamed squirrel raw-handed unless you want to know what it is to be made into hamburger. Mention that your cat is trying to catch squirrels, and someone will always be there to sagely intone that should the cat be able to nab one - whether by uncanny skill or dumb luck - the cat will get quite an education before it knows what hit it. I can corroborate this by the example of my own late cat, Lester: After much trial and error he finally got his squirrel - with the result being that he had his ass handed to him. Many chunks out of his ear and face. It was like he barely evaded a buzz saw. Naturally the squirrel got away, but since things could have been worse, and Lester being Lester, this only steeled his resolve to learn squirrel-fu and become King of the Jungle. Unfortunately he never lived long enough to find out if he could master this truly dangerous adversary, but knowing him, if any cat could do it, it would've been Lester. But I shudder to think how he would've looked in his later years from all the clawing and biting to come, so maybe it's just as well; he was stubborn, Lester was.

Squirrels may be 99.9% evasion, but it's not because they don't know any other way to take care of themselves. I think they evade not only out of prudence, but mainly for fun, and simply because they do it so remarkably well. They're not aggressors until forced into a corner.

Now to crowbar this post back on topic: Lester used to hang out in my building's workshop, but no one ever made instruments there, and it was more of a fun house for him, what with all the nooks, crannies, and overhead stuff for his feats of derring-do. But if I popped on over to the laundry, he'd follow there too and sit in the dryer looking very consequential. So since he was basically social and not really a shop cat per se, I don't think he - or the workshop, for that matter - really count for the purposes of this thread, unless it's honorary.

[Terry McGee]

Goodness, you've certainly recalibrated my naivety about squirrels! I thought them so cute.

Two stand out in my memories, both with a tenuous connection with the flute. My first experience of a squirrel was outside the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh, where I spent a week back in the seventies researching how they went about the business of collecting and securing folk traditions. But I also spent time in the Edinburgh University musical instrument collection. And Sandy Bell's, of course!

My second was in the Kensington Gardens in London, where a cute squirrel was entertaining passers-by at the statue of Peter Pan. London trips always involve a visit to the Royal College of Music collection, and, time permitting, the V&A, the BM and the Horniman. Oh, and wherever the sessions have shifted to. I still miss The Favourite. We were endemic there in seventy four...

Apparently, some people travel to these major world centres but don't check out the flute collections at all. I've never understood that....

[Nanohedron]

Goodness, you've certainly recalibrated my naivety about squirrels! I thought them so cute.

They ARE cute. It's how they put you off your guard, not that that's what they intend. And they're not invariably vicious; the less skittish ones will be just fine with you even feeding them by hand, all very peaceable-like, and in public parks may even solicit handouts. It's capture that sets 'em off.

If you have a tamed pet squirrel, that's a different matter; if they're fully gentled, handling them is usually not a problem, but such would be cases of abandoned kits that need care, and out of dependence on you are unlikely to know how to survive in the wild later on.

Apparently, some people travel to these major world centres but don't check out the flute collections at all. I've never understood that....

Philistines. That's all that can be said of 'em.