Dawn breaks. The frogs turn the volume down and the song birds and roosters gear up with the sunrise. I stretch under the mosquito net, enjoying the feeling of being not quite awake on a luminous tropical morning. Then the sounds begin to sort themselves out and I recognize the increasingly insistent squeals of hungry pigs and honking geese. The parrots start screaming at each other. The dogs chip in.
It’s time to get up and feed them all.
“
Is this a zoo?” a friend’s young son asked recently. Well, no. But I often feel like a zookeeper as I devote my first hour of wakefulness to ensuring that all my animal companions are appropriately fed and watered.
The pigs come first, because they are the largest and I harbour a dark suspicion that if breakfast is late they will push down the batako walls of their paddock and come raid the kitchen. Carrying a bucket of rainwater, I make my way to the ‘farm’ where two black snouts are snuffling at their gate. I am greeted warmly. Standing on their hind feet and braced against the wall, they watch anxiously as I uncover the blackened pot of food that was cooked for them the previous afternoon. My staff have made a little clay stove here, where food scraps and stale bread from the Bali Buddha restaurant kitchen are simmered over a flame of bamboo sticks to the colour and consistency of mud. Peggy and Paulette consider this the pinnacle of fine cuisine. Still half asleep, I pour the slop into a big square bucket, add water and brace myself. As I lean over the wall with breakfast, the pigs rush the bucket, scrambling to insert as much of their chubby selves into it as will fit. Black snouts plough blissfully through the stew, tufted tails wagging happily.
One species down, five to go.
In the next paddock Richard and Rosalind are honking insistently and spreading their broad white wings as reminders that geese get hungry, too. They were acquired as a young pair about a week after the pigs, since there was a big empty enclosure right next door. From the beginning they refused to eat anything but rice, despite my research which declared that they were foragers. Even if we cut up greens very small or try to sneak bean sprouts into their feed, they manage to pick them out. Repeated lectures on nutrition fail to move them. Anything except rice is regarded with imperial disdain.
Their meager diet doesn’t seem to have an impact on their health. They march around their paddock with great dignity and make noisy goose love in their little pond.
A few months ago I set up a rest home for cockatoos with Parrot Beak and Feather Disease. This virus manifests in baldness and grossly overgrown beaks. The breeder of these captive-bred parrots has tried every treatment mainstream science can provide, and has lent me a few to try alternative therapies. The disease is said to be incurable, but we refuse to give up. The patients look like plucked chickens, with random tufts of feathers sprouting here and there. The occasional bird will achieve full featherhood, usually with strange little curls on the wings and tail. Then just as you congratulate yourself that he is cured, he falls down dead for no obvious reason. This can be very discouraging.
The dogs follow me around to keep me on schedule. They know they’re next in the queue when I open the fridge door. The refrigerator is a small one, each rack filled with containers of food for the geese, food for the dogs, food for the birds, offerings, holy water, the occasional dead parrot awaiting burial, pots of herbal potions and spices. There is very little room for people food.
I peel fruit and vegetables for the juicer. Apples, carrots, beets, turmeric and parsley go through first. The residue is mixed with the usual dog food of chicken heads, vegetables and rice lovingly prepared by Wayan and sometimes supplemented with tofu or scrambled eggs. Kalypso was a very selective diner when she first came, but has relaxed her standards slightly over the years. Daisy hates vegetables and has to have hers mixed well with the rice and napped with a splash of rendered chicken fat or coconut oil. They both wish I would order smoked duck from the village more often.
Despite their pathetic appearance, the sick cockatoos eat like wolves. The screaming for breakfast starts at dawn. (In the afternoon they scream just for the hell of it.) Every two or three days I cook up a mash of red rice, peanuts, and mung beans with red palm sugar. This is mixed with the rest of the residue from the juicer with added unhusked rice and millet. They are also given a variety of nutritious snacks during the day by Wayan, who feels that food is always the best medicine.
Four species down, two to go.
The fish swim in patient silence while I bring out the stale bread from Bali Buddha. It’s a pleasant interlude to sit on the steps and toss them crumbs. They prefer bagels.
Just one species left now. I add ginger, turmeric and oranges to the juice (I am the only species that likes citrus) and sit down at the computer to begin my day. Contented silence reigns for a while. But by the afternoon they will all be hungry again…
