Contented Animals.

I've had another busy day. A bit of a shock to the system after three weeks of relaxing but I guess that's what day to day life is about.

The car battery was delivered in the morning. I thought it would be a good opportunity for Pete to supervise me fitting the battery so I know how to do it correctly. I often had to change the landrover's battery and great heavy things they were too but that was quite a while ago. This car has a tiny battery in comparison  and it didn't take too long to do. 

Most of my day has been spent trimming hedges with a combination of secateurs, long loppers and the electric hedge trimmer. Hard work but now the bottom hedge and the hedge by the terrace have been done. I also got the escallonia hedge into shape including from the neighbours' side. All that is left are the long shoots poking out of the top of the hedge by the street. Then I can get back to tidying up inside the garden.

The last job of the day was ironing the washing which had been out on the line. 

I had half expected to come across skinny stray cats on Crete tugging at my heartstrings and had wondered if the ready supplies of pet food available in every little supermarket were to cater for tourists wanting to feed up stray animals but this was never the case. 

I only saw four cats in Plaka who were obviously well fed, maybe from the many restaurant kitchens as they weren't even patrolling the dining tables in hope of scraps. Two lived by the waterfront restaurants and shops and two near the beachfront bistros. 

On my last afternoon on the beach I spotted one strolling along the shingle. I called him over (I'm a cat whisperer you know) and he obliged by plonking himself down by my sunbed. This Speedy look-a-like stayed and was happy to be stroked which of course made me happy.

Not many dogs to be seen either, just the occasional dog tied up by livestock or in a yard and a few on leads in Plaka. Up in a mountain village a couple of happy dogs were mooching around checking out the cars driving through the sleepy village.

All the livestock I came across looked to be well cared for with ample feed and water, from the goat that lived in the car park next to our apartment to the sheep and goats in the olive groves.

One notable feature was how stony the fields were. For millennia Crete had been a major wheat growing centre but 70 years ago the rise of cheap overseas wheat (and maybe the difficulty of using machines through the stones) led to the wheat fields being turned over to olive trees. Which is why there are few very old olive trees in Crete.

When I first saw this group of milking sheep I assumed the one on the left was a ewe with a lamb but on closer inspection I'm thinking some sort of goat.

Talking of goats, I came across this group of goats (and a sheep) in a field close to the village.

This black goat was enormous! The one next to him was a normal sized goat but he was the about the size of a small donkey. 

My first thought that they were Nubian goats but I wonder if he was a Beetal goat (an Indian breed). With no references of Beetal goats in Crete maybe he was just a super-sized Nubian. He certainly wouldn't win any prizes in  beauty contest but was friendly enough. Hopefully his impressive size will ensure a life as a breeding goat rather than ending up on the dinner table.

I saw a one lizard, or possibly a snake, sunning itself on a rock when I went for my early morning walk. But when I used the camera to check that it wasn't a stick it had gone. There are only four species of snake on Crete. Three are non-venomous and the fourth has weak venom with fangs that are set too far back for it to be able to bite a human.