The dogs are still gone. Five days today. Talk to people who have missed pets for 3 to 7 days with a happy ending. I'm starting to wonder whether someone has picked them up. There's a chance someone has but doesn't know who to contact until they trace Jamaica's dog tag number through the council. Today was a public holiday so with luck we'll get that phone call tomorrow. We've got posters up at the Ma Ma Creek and Tenthill shops. Tomorrow posters will go to the vet surgery and the school and I'll get an ad in the local rag's Lost and Found section. Surely someone somewhere will know what's become of them.

Hiked up Mt. Whitestone yesterday. Got soaked with a passing shower (which unfortunately bypassed our dry and dusty property). Was on the path which follows the base of the summit. Not too many people go there so the birds and animals are less wary. Stood about 3 feet from two red backed fairy wrens with their twittering jittering females. Diamond drops were falling from the leaves and those tiny birds were revelling in the unexpected bath. Diminutive wings made gossamer by the sunlight were held out to be groomed with tiny beaks. They watched me with as much interest as I watched them.

I get this feeling of life shared at moments like that. My big thunky heart going boom boom boom while theirs is thrumming along at a sizzling vibrato. Yet it's the same, that urge to Life. My ponderous intelligence and their bright knowingness. The local farmers burn their paddocks every year - and unfortunately we are on the cusp of the burning times. I think of these little birds every year who, although they can fly away, lose their homes, their nests, their matted understory which gives them predator cover. It seems so unfair that we sacrifice them, I was going to say with a cavalier attitude, but there is no attitude. They are not given a passing thought. The only reason humans are superior to animals is because we have the means to destroy them. We are connected by blood and bone and spirit but we have forgotten.

But I am an optimist. Twenty years ago no one would have considered banning live export. It's on again but it has happened once and will happen again. Permanently. More and more people choose to live a meat free life. Animal shows abound on television whether it's of the calibre of David Attenborough or a child narrated half hour on a local network. Our neighbour came yesterday morning in a flap because he'd hit a wallaby. We followed him back. It was a female with a joey. We took her to P and G's. Unfortunately she died on the way but the joey, named Polanski to go with Roman who I took to P last Tuesday, is thriving. This neighbour is a guy's guy, nothing airy fairy about him. But he stopped, he got help. Our awareness of our fellow beings whether they are furred or feathered, whether they have backbones or not, increases all the time. I have hope.

Had a dream last night, such an obvious dream that I could interpret it. I dreamed of a cluttered make-up drawer, somewhat like the make-up drawer in the bathroom in which resides all the accumulated detritus of feminine 'stuff'. In the dream I was made to return to the drawer, to rummage through it until I cried out I don't want to play with make-up. How glaring is that? I don't want to play with make-up, made up, make believe - and of course make-up exists to disguise the faults and imperfections of the outward appearance.