Taking the Tick...

Has anyone any tips on removing ticks from dogs? I mean tips that actually work? Although Ozzie’s regularly plagued by the little blighters, they’re mostly of some small Brazilian variety which fall off of their own volition (well, helped by the tick lotion we apply monthly). However last weekend, after a visit to Naice’s parents, he picked up a tick which I suspect is just like your common or garden UK sheep tick. And it wasn’t in any hurry to fall off, so we spent 2 days trying to remember what I’d read about removing them. I tried the ‘smother it in Vaseline, and when it comes up for air just snatch it off’ trick, and when the only result was that Ozzie’s left hind leg became lovely and slippery, we resorted to the ‘touch a hot match to it, and when it recoils…etc etc’. All that happened was that we were left with a large pile of matches which were quite dead, unlike the tick.

Today Naice got frustrated with the thing and just whipped it off with a pair of tweezers, but now we’re not sure if we left the head in the wound or not. . So, any budding vets out there who have a FOOLPROOF methodology, perhaps you could let us know?

Das Boot

Shamrock was finally launched (pics) and I motored it around from the Suzuki works to our chosen marina (incidentally, ‘marina’ here means somewhere where they take your boat out of the water with a boat lift and use a fork lift truck to store it on a platform in a multi-storey garage –pics later). It being my first time in charge of my own boat, and having little petrol and no emergency oar (tsk), I was a little nervous about the whole affair. Anyway it went off without a hitch and the boat performed admirably (as, I felt, did the Captain (yo no soy marinero – soy capitan)). Unlike on the following Tuesday, when el capitan took out his first passenger (Naice, of course), for a pootle about on the Rio Taruma (the Taruma Acu, as opposed to the Taruma Mirim, for those interested).

I decided to take 20 litres of petrol along in my spare tank, along with a coffee strainer and a coke-bottle funnel (see earlier post), and all was well until I tried to get the petrol into my main tank. The result was that much of it ended up in the boat and all over me…so we had to abandon this idea and motor over to one of the floating petrol stations (pic) to put R$20 in the tank from the pump. We asked the guy if he would strain it through the coffee filter and he was happy enough to do so. Having thus rescued the situation, we cast off and…couldn’t start the motor. As we floated gently backwards into the petrol station flutuante, I suggested to the attendant that his petrol must be really bad, although I’m not sure he thought this was funny.

Anyway, we floated off again, slowly into midstream and vaguely back towards the marina in the far distance, turning the motor over as much as we dared. After a few minutes of this, I decided an alternative strategy was required, so I sat at the back wrestling with the cover of the motor and trying not to fall in. I succeeded in getting the cover off and checked what I could (I’m not going to take the plugs out or anything, now, am I?). A visual inspection indicated that all seemed OK, so I replaced the cover and re-primed the fuel…and it started first time. Go figure. Hope it doesn’t happen again.

I have to run the motor in for 20 hours before I can give it a good thrashing, and at the moment I can’t even get it to plane at the revs I’m allowed to give it (3,000 rpm). It’s now done two slow hours and counting…

The container arrives

The container was all of a sudden released and our friendly agent arranged for someone to pick the stuff up and deliver it to the house. It duly arrived last Thursday (9th), since when we have been unpacking and trying to organise things in the house as best we can. It’s lovely to have the stuff with us again, even if 50% of it is of no practical use whatever. Never mind.

Given the contours of the garden and the size of the driveway gate, it wasn’t possible to get the truck anywhere near the house, so the 145 boxes had to be lifted out, dumped in the driveway and then carried down to the house. Joy unbounded. And no sooner had we got them all down to the house than the familiar sound of distant thunder started up, so we had to move them all again to get them under cover. Happily, we achieved this with barely seconds to spare. We may look happy in the photo, but I must admit the tempers were somewhat frayed by the time we’d finished (in spite of the impending rain, much of the humping of boxes was done in 90 degree-plus sunshine).

Anyway it’s all done now, and 70% of the stuff has been laid out or put away as required. In fact you can see from the photo that the inside of the house has taken a turn for the better (although there is still much to do). At present we’re looking around for a dining table and chairs, a sofa, and somewhere to put the TV.

Call for a Botanist, please

Naice spotted this thing on one of the palms today (pic - click on image to enlarge). I have absolutely no idea what it is, and neither have any of the locals I’ve spoken to. It was about two - three inches long. Anyone…?

Wildlife update

We were surprised to see a pair of altogether different toucan-type birds the other day – much smaller and distinguished by a really bright yellow chest. Don’t know what they are, but I’ll identify them yet. We also spotted a large eagle drying its wings on the dead tree just beyond our boundary yesterday. Now that we have our binoculars, this bird-watching lark seems to be a piece of cake. The little monkeys are back, making regular forays into the garden on the hunt for our bananas and papayas. Not to be outdone, Naice has taken to trying to remove the ripening papayas first. Given that this has to be done with a 3m long bamboo pole with me underneath trying to catch anything that falls, it’s not so simple. Score so far: monkeys 4 Naice 1.