I find this abandoned roller near the cricket field on the Common and think it needs to be remembered. It must have been new once.
A dog called Sophie Tucker fell from her owners' yacht, off the coast of Queensland, swam through shark invested seas until she came to a desert island, and survived there for 4 months. I hear the story on BBC Radio 4 this morning. An Australian cattle dog with short hair and tough disposition, she was well quipped for the ordeal. Apparently she lived off goats, which ran wild on the island and crabs. She was mistaken by her eventual rescuers for a wild dog, but when reintroduced to her owners, recognised them immediately and settled quickly back into her old domestic routine.
Pigeons, I notice, squeak as they fly past me in the Grove, as though their wings need a drop of oil.
5 comments:
Amazing story of the castaway dog! and I do like that photo.
Roller archeology. It probably used to squeak.
One story has the island residents noticing the dog looked to be in very bad shape, then began looking a lot healthier, as he apparently managed to catch and eat some young goats. Still, always better to be home and dry. And fed.
That dog story requires a fictional tweak: say, when rescued it bit its saviours as a means of underlining its powers of survival. One gets the feeling it wasn't a nice dog to know. Perhaps it bit the sharks too.
Z, I'm sure the roller squeaked.
The dog, apparently behaved badly towards its rescuers, and gave the impression of, in fact, being a wild dog. It did, while marooned, according to the account I read, eat baby goats. A detail, which I omitted, is that part of its domestic routine was to go jogging with its owner, a feature of their daily life which was quickly restored. You're right, BB, It is probably a rather unpleasant dog, but sad to say, it is often the unpleasant who survive.
A cocker spaniel couldn't have done it. I once remarked that cockers would not be able to survive in the wild, and Tom replied 'No, there's no love out there...'
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