Goats

Our herd of wild goats have returned.  They have found a water source.  The leaky water mains.

The pipe was fixed last week and a few days later it burst again.

Happy goats.

The piping all the way down the road will have to be replaced.  Sometime.  Sometime never.

Here are just a portion of them having a drink.  The herd must be well over 20, from huge billy goats to frisky youngsters.  The latter are in danger of being wiped out.  Our neighbour just bought a new gun

We hear them most nights now, rearing up and bringing down the lower olive branches, chewing up any branches from our lemon trees and bougainvillia that hang over the fence.  That's fair game, I don't mind them trimming the overhang.

The house on the other side which has been vacant for a few years has just yesterday been rented out to a dutch couple.  They arrived while I was watering the garden. I naturally came out to see what all the fuss was about.  We don't do 'fuss' around here normally.

There they were, the nieces of the aged aunt who once owned the house, our local estate agent and the foreign couple.  They all came over to tell me what was going on and the dutch, or maybe  it was Austrian, woman introduced herself. I was taken rather by surprise, thought they hadn't spotted me having a snoop and didn't quite take it all in. 

They obviously weren't told to keep their big garden gates shut because we could hear the goats having a feast in their garden last night.  I hope the olive trees aren't too badly damaged.  It will be olive season in a month or so.

This neighbourhood is becoming quite cosmopolitan.  We already have english neighbours, who only usually come for the summer, then there's me from NZ and now we have Dutch/Austrian.  They have rented for all the year but from what I understand they will only be here for a month.  A year long holiday rental.

The last few days we have heard a few rifle shots from next door. Neighbour says he's 'trying out' the new gun. On what?

And yesterday there was a huge explosion which rocked the house. I don't know where that came from. Maybe a fisherman was dynamiting fish down in the bay.

Or the navy was detonating depth charges.

This morning I was woken by the sound of a shotgun going off very close, six times. It was another neighbour, across the valley. Though the shots were so loud I thought they were outside our front gate.

K phoned him straight away. He was scaring the goats from his land.

Then tonight I really did hear a kerfuffle outside our gate. A large smelly billy goat had managed to grab one of our rose bushes and was munching away and another was breaking down Vaso's fence to eat her carob tree. 

They've survived and multiplied for several years now.  

No shotgun is going to scare this lot off. They roam over kilometres of forest and  ancient rocks, feasting on olives and occasionally destroying vineyards and vegetable gardens, eating roses and trimming lemon trees.