Tails of a Lizard (& Other Animals)

Our house is a long stone building - half living area and half barn.

My mum and I are on the top floor with a bedroom and bathroom each. We also have a lounge room and study. Next to my room is a long narrow staircase that leads to an awesome loft area and downstairs is a huge kitchen. Next door to our section is the "apartment" where Sam lives where he also has his own bedroom, bathroom and kitchen.


But without a doubt, the best part of my new room is the shower. There are three settings.

1. A normal shower.

2. An overhead shower - which is like being in a storm and completely drenches you.

3. A side shower - which catapults pointy streams of water all over your body from all different directions. And when turned to full, begins to be quite violent but awesome and ticksome.

The veggie garden is over-grown and full of fruit and vegetables (and weeds). We found zucchinis, tomatos, lettuce, cabbages, strawberries, raspberries and what we think are squash (but we might google that before we eat it and die of poisoning). But the strawberries and raspberries are delicious straight from the garden and the tomatoes were really tasty on our veggie burgers for dinner.


There are 2 sheep - unnamed as one's to be turned into lamb chops in October. Unfortuantely it's not the one that hates me and tries to butt me through the electric fence. (I'm vegetarian, so I'm not planning on eating the poor thing.) The two dogs, Jack and Arthur, are also kept in by an electric fence as are the chickens.


I learnt that you can test whether an electric fence is working with a piece of dry grass. (If it's too wet, you might as well just grab the fence with your hand because water conducts electricity really well. But if the piece of grass is too dry you probably won't feel a thing as no electricty will be conducted at all.) By touching the grass on the fence and moving slowly in (closer to your fingers) at some point you can feel the current without getting its full force.

In the name of science, we tried to convince Sam to be our test subject to see whether peeing on the electric fence would really give you a nasty shock, but he rudely refused (though he says politely declined). Luckily, we had already learnt on Mythbusters that it doesn't (but we didn't want to tell Sam that).



Overlooking the animals and veggie garden and through a small forest of stinging nettles, we found an old tree house. After a de-branchifying and good sweep it started to look like a cool hang out especially with the bucket attached to a rope which I will be able to use to pull up all my supplies.

When I went to get down, I quickly realised that there were only 2 rungs on the ladder which didn't seem such a problem when I was getting up. So off we went to the barn to find some timber and nails with which to repair the ladder. When Sam slid the metal door across, down dropped a small long animal which was violently throwing itself around. Bending down, we couldn't make out what it was as it was moving so quickly and we debated whether it was a worm, snake or lizard. But as its wriggling slowed down, we realised that it was a lizard tail! This really is an impressive defence mechanism because it took all three of us at least a minute to figure it out by which time the lizard was long gone.

It turns out that the nerves and muscles in the tail continue to function after it comes off distracting the predator. However, the lizard must use up more resources to regrow the tail which is never quite as effective as the original. The lizard also has more trouble running and keeping balance without his tail. So, if you're trying to catch a lizard, it's best to remember to catch it gently around it's tummy and not by it's tail. (Although at the other end it reminds me of Mike the headless chicken!)


I also started my recorder lessons today. Sam is teaching my mum and I to play as he is a musician and sometimes busks playing the recorder, violin and mandolin. We practiced in the top of the barn as it made the music sound nicer, maybe having something to do with the big empty space. I'm learning an allegretto piece which is a musical term (and Italian) meaning "fairly lively and fast". Playing music in a sunbeam-decorated barn in the middle of France sure does beat music class at school.

Then again, doing anything in the middle of France beats school....

False Friends In the supermarket today, I wondered why they were selling poison in the frozen food section. But it turned out that it was poisson, meaning fish. False friends are pairs of words in two languages that look and/or sound similar, but differ in meaning. (Even more confusing, poison in french is also poison, and is spelt the same as poisson!)