Traffic Stoppers - just a couple of innocent looking ducks

After waving goodbye to the kids this morning and cleaning up around the house, I heard a strange but familiar sound coming from outside my house. I looked out the window and there were two ducks waddling up the street, right in the middle of the road. I was just in time to see a car drive slowly up, then stop in front of the ducks. The poor driver was expecting the ducks to move off the road, but these two ducks have no fear whatsoever. The driver had to stop his car, get out and shoo the ducks away.

I decided to grab my camera and see if I could help out the morning drivers by getting the ducks off the road for at least a little while.

Attention seekers...

Who me?



This was right before another car came from the opposite direction. Lucky they were careful drivers. 'Twas a female driver this time who was laughing hysterically at the thought of having to stop for a couple of dopey ducks!

The female duck: She didn't even move when I got this close

The male duck was NOT moving out of the middle of the road for ANYTHING...

The female was a little smarter (marginally) - and headed for the food she saw me putting on the grass.

FINALLY! The male duck found some food and meandered very slowly onto the nature strip.

The funniest thing was the male duck quacking or rather 'honking' at every car and person who tried to shoo him away. The first car beeped their horn, which just made the duck 'honk' even louder at the car. It was as if he was saying "I'm king duck, and this is MY road...GET OFF!" That driver had to stop his car, get out and shoo them away, with the male duck quacking at him the entire time. Needless to say the driver was extremely patient and rather amused by the whole scenario.

He is a very pretty duck, but wouldn't look so pretty if he becomes roadkill

Sewerage Dramas

A little less than a year ago, we were having some major problems with our sewer pipes. You might be familiar with the telltale signs - the IO in the front yard is overflowing, your toilet won't flush and when you can put an electric eel down there, the pipes seem to only clear for two weeks. The plumbers we had who came out to clear the pipes again said the tree root problem was so bad, and the pipes so far damaged that they couldn't put an electric eel down ever again. Our pipes were going to need to be replaced, and it was going to cost us big time. The 'root' of the problem? A stupid council tree!

X marks the spot where the problem lies.

Can you see how close the 'X' is to the tree? Quite ridiculous!

Telltale signs of tree damage.

The rest of the roots that came out of that massive hole in the nature strip.

A big ball of roots. This was what had completely clogged and damaged the drain.

To cut a long story short, we didn't dig up the pipes. We simply couldn't afford to. We had the pipes lined instead (still expensive, but not as costly as digging up the pipes), the Council removed the tree and has refused to accept any responsibility whatsoever for their stupidity in planting the tree a metre away from sewer pipes but the most important thing *knock on wood* we haven't had any more problems with our sewer system.