Goat Climbs Tree: photo evidence

We knew goats were pretty handy at climbing mountains. But it wasn't until a recent trip to PSerimos that we learned they are also pretty useful in a tree situation.

The leaves up there are, presumably, tastier than the grass down there.

Beware of the (Pathetic) Dog

ΠΡOΣOXH ΣKYLOΣ (Prosochi Skylos)

The sign promises terror, danger and sharp teeth.



Reality is a "dog" you could fit in your wallet.

Beware? Of that? Do me a favour.

Little Baby Lizard

We share our space with animals. In summer there are ants and recently there have been one or two little baby lizards. Pink things that cling to walls.

This one is about two inches long and he's called Theophilos.

Greek Cats are Harder than Scottish Cats but Scottish Youth Would Tank Greek Youth

Greek cats would murder Scottish cats. Fat and soft, Scots pussies want for nothing as they snore by the fireplace.

Meanwhile, life is raw for their Greek counterparts. Only a spoilt minority are family pets; the rest are hard-as-nails feral street-beasts who fight for food and die in forgotten alleyways. The guy above is having a good day - he's stumbled across a random deposit of sardines near the wharf, but he'll need to eat it quick.


This one is more typical: he looks like he's been in a fight and maybe he hasn't eaten much more than the stinking remains of an abandoned souvlaki for the last few days.

Oddly enough - the story with teenagers is the exact opposite.


The kids round here are breast-fed to the age of 30. Their only worry is what time their next pizza is to be delivered, while Greek parents work themselves into the ground to pay for it.

Glasgow's wiry young teams would tear them apart, limb from fat limb...

...but their cats would kill ours and so the question remains: which country is best?

Another Day in Paradise

The ants have eaten the best part of the fish and now they begin on the head.

The fish herself stopped thinking about anything a while ago.

Rats, rats, lay down flat.

There have been quite a few dead rats lying around recently. We don't know if it's co-incidence or whether there is something about October which leads to more rats getting caught out.

This one was photographed on the back road to Massouri and there have been several more closer to our house.

It looks as if he was hit by a vehicle and the other ones we have seen have been similarly splayed in the centre of roads. Perhaps with less light at this time of year the rats have trouble looking where they are going. Does anyone know the truth?



Look: there's a fair bit of meat on him!

But we're not that poor yet, so we left him where we found him.

Massive Insect Season

Look at this bloody monster that flew in through the living-room door last week.



It just flew right in there, opened its mouth and said in a broad Glaswegian accent

"Hey you - are ye making a cup of tea or what?"

It was insistent and only succumbed to being trapped in a family-sized coffee jar after getting his cup of tea and a bit of cucumber.

What to do in situations like this?

Do you say "yes" and get the kettle on or do you say "no" and risk them becoming violent? Is giving in to a bully insect's tea demands mean that you're a pussy or is it just a sensible course of action... what if stubborn pride leads to the house being smashed up?

We quickly decided that appeasement was the answer in this situation. After all, he looked like he'd been drinking. So we brewed up.

Before we could show him to the guest insects chair, he plonked himself down on the sofa and spread himself out, allowing us to see his fat belly for the first time.

He drank his tea and ate his cucumber, taking up the whole sofa as he did so while we perched ourselves on the two little chairs, laughing nervously at his slurred stories and racist remarks.

Eventually, the tea was finished and he allowed himself to be jarred and chucked. We breathed a sigh of relief you could hear in Kos. He was probably only here for 20 minutes but it felt like aeons.

Anyway, after we put him out, we've not seen him again and its been more than 5 days so here's hoping we made the right decision.

We'll let you know.

The Tortoise

Our tortoise has been out of hibernation for a little while and can often be seen zooming aorund the garden.

No joking - it can fairly move and this is the only photo that didn't come out blurry.



However - this may be down to technological inability rather than the actual speed of the toirtoise!

Death of Goat

So, the neighbour's bonus raffle goats we mentioned yesterday got dispatched this morning. Here's how it went:

Don't worry - there's nothing too graphic in the minute and-a-half-long film, although its probably slightly disturbing if you're a vegan.

OOPS!
VIDEO REMOVED FOR EDITING
back soon...

Sad, eh?

Last Meal for These Two

The guy from next door spent five Euros on raffle tickets and came up trumps, winning two goats for Easter.

The neighbours don't have a garden so they're staying for one night in our garden before the killer comes tomorrow to turn them into meat.

See how keenly they feed themselves on our weeds!


So this is an Easter picture of a Last Supper although the difference between these goats and Jesus is that Jesus knew what was going to happen to him.

Death Row - One Week To Live

Kalo Pascha!

That's what Greeks will be saying to each other this time next week, it means "Happy Easter".



Happy for them, as Lent comes to an end and they may eat meat again.

Not so happy for the chap above, for exactly the same reasons.

All over the town, sheep like this are waiting in gardens with rope around their legs and they don't even know why.

It's like one big oblivious death row!

Curiosity...

I say, what's that in the back of that wee truck bike thing?



Oh, it's a pile of cats.


Cute.

Casually Taking The Sheep for a Walk

Check this scene from from the other day. Just a nomral everyday guy, acting real casual, real cool.

Just taking his sheep for a walk.

There are a lot of sheep around the town at the moment. Probably because Easter is only a few weeks away...

The sheep seem to enjoy being centre of attention. They have absolutely no idea of the fate which lies in store for them in just three weeks time.

Muaah ha ha ha ha ha!

Dead Cats

There are a lot of dead cats around at the moment.



Maybe people drive faster at this time of year. Perhaps the pussies are too busy thinking about sex to pay attention to the traffic. It is spring, after all.

Day 56 - Easy Meat

Good news: the mosquitoes are getting easier to kill.

The colder weather has made their movement sluggish and they are not the devils they were in the summer. Before they would zip, fly and tear around like fighter planes - now they struggle from perch to perch like a drunk man walking home.

Only a few weeks ago our night's sleep would be constantly interrupted by buzzing and biting. We would wake up in the middle of the night, exhausted from being eaten, and have to chase the elusive bastardos around the room with books, cursing if they jumped in time and whooping like American sports fans whenever one got splatted.

Now the whole affair is more nonchalant. If one buzzles past your face you can bang your hands together in mid-air and kill it that way - easy.

During working hours, Nicole has perfected the one-handed kill, where a passing mozzy is merely plucked from the air and crushed without the other hand ever leaving the computer keyboard.

You don't need a book any more. You can just walk up to them as they lie sleeping on the wall and finish them with a little one-inch punch from the heel of your fist.

In the background of our minds is the horror of summer but, for now, we are the dominant life-form in this house. Fear us, insects!

Day 51 - Sick Pussy

Everyone downstairs has caught the flu. First Maria was sniffly on Thursday and Friday, then Michael picked it up on Saturday and now, mysteriously, Avramopolous the cat seems to have caught it from somewhere.

Although, perhaps it's more than just a cold. As well as sneezing and sniffling, Avramopolous (pictured right, lying down) isn't eating and is thinning visibly by the hour. His condition causes such concern that an emergency trip to the vet's is announced.

The vet's place is a brand new building, all nice wood and smooth plasterwork. We actually noticed it for it's shiny quality on a walk last week but misread the sign and took it to be a gynaecologist. Yes, our Greek is not improving.

Anyway, the vet does her vet thing, admits that she doesn't know what the problem is and promptly charges Michael 40 Euros.

We make a joke about the cost of pussy spiralling out of control and laugh like drains.

Unimpressed, Michael decides to wait a few days for the return visit because if Avramopolous "pops off" anyway, then the money will have been wasted.

Economia!

Day 49 - Animal Cruelty and Sex

There's a sad dog who lives by the wharf. It's a chocolate brown coloured beast that looks like some kind of Weimerarner.

It lives, chained to a rock, on an open concrete platform at the bottom of a set of stairs that lead up to someone's house. The people who live there must feed it occasionally because although thin, it's still alive.

But every time we pass, the dog is alone and seems to say with it's big sad eyes... "Please love me." It's as if the dog is chained not only to a rock, but to lonliness itself.

Boo Hoo.

On a lighter note, we have managed to capture video of two flies having sex with each other. You can watch it on YouTube

Day 35 - Fatal Snake Attack

We walk to Vothini to pick (more) olives. The monotony of harvest is broken in the afternoon when one of the guys selling vegetables from the back of a pickup suddenly pulls up outside the plantation and starts shouting "Fithi, fithi!" which translates as "Snake, snake!" Turns out that he has partially driven over a snake which is now suffering in the road. We go to the gate to see the reptile dazed, but getting ready to slither off. The vegetable salesman has different ideas and backs up his truck to roll over the snake a second time. Then, with the help of Maria giving him directions, he rolls his fat back wheels backwards and forwards over the creature's body three times more, just to make sure. Finally, he rests the full weight of his vehicle right on top of the snake's head just to make absolutely, definitely certain of a kill. This is all done without much excitement, and when the vegetable salesman rolls his wheel away and he and Maria are satisfied that the snake's twitching is only reflex action, they nod their approval of a job well done and no more is said. He drives off to sell vegetables and we go back to work. The scaly corpse of the snake is left in the road and opinion is split. Nicole thinks the serpent could have been dangerous and it's a good job the veg guy came when he did. Paul and Michael think that the snake was harmless and should have been left alone. The truth is, we don't know whether it was dangerous or not. Can any experts out there tell us from the picture exactly what animal died today?

Day 23 - Donkey Newsflash!

There is a donkey crisis in Greece. It’s all over the pages of the Athens News. Never mind the carbon emissions, the mass ownership of cars is putting donkeys across Greece out of work, numbers are declining, and within 20 years they may vanish completely from Greek Soil.

While Geneva is busy dealing with the crisis in the Middle East, the Greek island, Hydra, is hosting a Donkey Convention in an attempt to try and deal with this imminent threat of extinction.

Not since the Italian invasion in 1940, has there been such concern about the threat to Greek "cultural heritage". Apparently, the vanishing of this population threatens the Hellenic identity and legacy to be passed to the next generation.

Judging from the trend-following adolescents around here, it would appear that this next generation would rather speed away from the reading of their father’s will in the old man’s Peugeot, rather than straddling the family donkey.

Although, in the entrepreneurial hands of Stelios, this unwanted legacy would probably result in the instant Europe-wide hit: EasyAss.com

We turn the page to read that Greece has been convicted by the European Court for breaking environmental law. Twenty-three towns have been cited as having sub-standard sewage networks and treatment plants. Kalymnos is on the list of offending areas.

Great, our dream holiday destination: sun, sea, shite, and the odd ass.

Day 14 - The Unfussy Tortoise and The Gay Bishop

Down in the yard, Michael feeds tins of dog-food to his cats and informs us that these seemingly disinterested moggies are in fact very fussy about their brands. Apparently, the kittens Nectarios and Avramopolous eat Fleshy while Sally, their mother, only eats Rockus, possibly because Rockus is for grown up dogs.



The wild tortoise who has no name and who is a frequent visitor to the garden is not fussy and tucks into some spare Fleshy before peeing and crawling off to hide under one of Michael’s tables of junk. The number of different types of animals we have witnessed pee in our lives increases by one.

We learn that Nectarios kitten is named after Bishop Nectarios who was apparently “demoted” by the Greek Orthodox Church when they discovered he was a homosexual. People round here, we are told, refer to him as The Sultana of the Aegean.


Interesting Greek language fact #2: There are only 24 letters in the Greek alphabet and three of them make exactly the same sound: “ee”.