One of the hens is limping. K thinks there is some kind of infection in her foot, the one she (the hen) can’t put down. When I asked W, who knows more about these things, he thought the hen had hurt her foot on the construction debris she had been exploring. He recommended soaking the injured foot in warm water with TCP. But the next time I saw the hen she was walking normally.

All day I thought with anticipation of the nightfall and the lunar conflagration it would bring. When the day’s work was done and tiredness set in, I took the Bouvier to the field but was disappointed to see that no moon had risen yet. No party, no late night, no moon. Never mind. The dog was entitled to is walk. He was off the lead, since in the night he is less likely to run amok. As I made towards the river he stayed behind near our bonfire spot. I reached the bank and waited, listening for the owl. No owl either. On tonight’s evidence, it seems that the owl remains silent if the moon is not out. The young Bouvier was not answering my calls and he had not joined me by the river, which was unlike him. I walked back to the spot where I had left him, and there he was, sitting in a cowering sort of way. He would take a step or two towards me, bend his body in a sideways arch and then sit again. The unpleasant smell was the telltale sign. So that is what was keeping him.

He had done his dogly duty in the field, but this time he had something of a loose stomach and he had either misjudged the angle or just been unlucky. The fact is that not all of it had fallen down, and there was a large mess sticking to the fluff of his rear. The Bouvier seemed mortified, and it was clear that he was unwilling or unable to walk anywhere in his present state. This had happened before, and I knew what to do. I went to the house, got a roll of kitchen tissue and came back to the field, where the Bouvier, as he hadn’t ever done before, had stayed put on the same spot. I laid the lit torch on the ground, stood in front of him and, holding the fluffy body between my legs, I bent forward towards his backside and wiped his bum.

It was hard to believe how much there was, as sheet after sheet of kitchen tissue came off soiled until there was a goodly pile of them on the ground. I realised this wasn’t going to solve the problem this time. After puzzling awhile over the humbled dog’s predicament, I coaxed him towards the house, left him sitting on the yard and went in to prepare a solution of warm water with washing up liquid. I probably don’t need to describe what ensued. Suffice it to say that, after repeated ablutions to which he submitted with surprising docility, the Bouvier began to wag his tail again. As I disposed of the rubber gloves, the water and the plastic container, I remembered the kitchen tissues in the field. I went to fetch them without a torch and found them easily, not only because I know my field and I remembered the exact spot, but also because, only then did I realise it, the moon was now shining in all its glory, and the field, apart from the temporary defilement of a few soiled sheets of paper, had once more become a silver temple. The unscheduled developments of the night meant that I was, after all, able to partake of tonight's lunar worship. If the owl screeched, I did not notice.

1 August 2007

I was late home after the performance and the party, which the worrying about dog and hens had compelled me to leave earlier than I would have liked to. The roads were blissfully empty most of the way back, and on arrival I headed straight for the Bouvier, who had spent a record number of hours by himself. My visions of psychological harm to his canine mind and physical harm to the furniture proved groundless as the good fluffy thing came up to me in his unfailing affectionate fashion, the only signs of any trauma being, if anything, a greater intensity of joy in welcoming me. He came out with me to check on the hens, who unforgivably had been left out at the mercy of every wild beast of the night until a late hour. They had come to no harm either, and as I shut their pophole I heard a screeching in the field indicative of some interesting creature. I brought the dog into the house for his dinner and once he had eaten I took him out to the field. A treat was in store.

In the chilly midnight the moon was burning the field with its silver light, giving it the look of one vast pagan temple dedicated to lunar worship. It was impossible not to remember Casta Diva che inargenti queste palle piante antiche…I didn’t need the torch; it would have been sacrilegious to intrude with a man-made light. I plodded over the uneven ground in the direction of the screech, by the river. When I reckoned I was in front of the sound’s source I put the torch on and shone it on the trees: it was an owl, perched on a horizontal branch. I hadn’t come this close to an owl before, but I had always thought owls made an ocarina-like hoot. And yet this was a strident, alarmed kind of screech, with a two-beat, iambic sort of rhythm. And the bird was definitely an owl. This owl was not amused to be glared by my torch and it showed his displeasure by releasing a dropping, audible and wet. And he held his ground, not budging from his branch, and the light did not inhibit him performing his screech with determination, not averting his round eyes from the glare of my torchlight. I observed it for a moment and then switched the torch off and went on my way round the silver temple the field had become. The murmur of the Rede sounded confidential, like an intimate talk or perhaps a prayer in propitiation of the moon. After a full circuit round the field it still seemed too soon to go back in, so the Bouvier and I went up the drive. Walking back, the moonlit was a blessed thing. If I hadn’t written mooncast I would do it all over again, but the result would be different up here from what I wrote in Coquetdale.