"Will you walk into my parlour?", said the Spider to the Fly.

johngalway · 17-02-2010 11:14pm #1

Wednesday February 17th

Last Spring saw my mate and I run around like blue arsed flies from farm to farm. All resulting from calls seeking assistance regarding foxes eating lambs. Seeing as how we both come from farming families we were glad to help out and solve those problems. We had two particularly busy months, March and April, in which we shot a not inconsiderable number of foxes for this area.

Where it all went wrong was when money was mentioned. Not by us I hasten to add, maybe that was the problem. Promises were made, when cheques arrive in the post, when we next met Joe or James Bloggs, it was like one of those pay day episodes of All Creatures Great & Small. It was a good feeling, having your time appreciated without asking. However, time moved on, people went into hiding, possibly changing their names or moving continent, cheques seemingly hung in the post like it was some sort of financial purgatory, certain people at the local livestock mart seemed to develop a bizarre type of recognition amnesia in my immediate vicinity... In short, it got tiresome to the point of both of us sincerely wishing that no one had mentioned anything.

My mate had a simple handle on the situation. "Next year they'll have foxes too". And how very true that is.

Besides, this Spring I'm going to have less than half the time for lamping as I did last Spring. Decisions have been made, and a peek over towards greener pastures has been had. It's time to pay attention to what's important. Since my ewes will be dropping lambs in roughly five weeks time, I thought it's prudent to concentrate on the immediate local area. My aim for the rest of the season is not to lose a single lamb of my own to foxes. Words that'll come back to haunt me no doubt!

Tonight I am out on my own farm. It's located between the sea and an almost mountain, not too far away on either side my mates Dad has land in which his ewes will lamb. I've been told they've heard foxes near the house in the past week. There's a lopsided crescent moon out, like it's been nailed to a wall and had the top nail fall out, leaving it hang precariously ready to fall on an important visitors head. All the smartest cowboys wore those salmon coloured long johns under their jeans and shirts. They had it pegged from the start that jeans are as much use as tits on a bull when it's cold out, and I'm not going to disprove their theory when the grass is frozen and I've already defrosted the car twice today. There's practically no wind worth a mention, and for once it's going in my favour.

It took about forty minutes of absolutely nothing happening for something to happen. From my lofty peak, where a form of pure laziness and the hateful feeling of stupidity I get from being snuck up on kept me on the highest rock, I spied a glowing pair of eyes. They were across the neighbours land, across my farm, across the wood, across the road, across and halfway up the next hill even! But they definitely belonged to a fox.

Ten minutes of nothing else interesting happening happened, and the definitely fox was slowly turning into a type of maybe a cat on a wall type of feeling. My mind gets a kick from having my eyes play tricks on it, I don't particularly appreciate the antics of either.

All of a sudden, as happens when nothing is happening, my fox breaks cover, bursting forth from the wood and onto ~ My Land ~ "Will you walk into my parlour?", said the Spider to the Fly. I had been smelling fox where she jumps the wall from the wood over the past couple of weeks. Into the rushes she goes, on a course that will bring her down wind of me. Springing across the small stream near my creep feeder she momentarily disappears behind a stone wall. My eye is out of the scope and following the lamp beam, after a few seconds she hops the wall and into full view.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Steyr243Hunter · 18-02-2010 12:06am

Good read,
Looking forward to the book.:)

LB6 · 18-02-2010 12:10am

Was just thinking the same thing Steyr....

JG - you should be putting a TM on your stories for the impending book that's going to sell off the shelves.

I'll have a signed hard cover please - Free Gratis

kay 9 · 18-02-2010 12:52am

Great story john...

Ps. keep 'em comin

sikastag · 18-02-2010 12:52pm

Great stuff john.

tikkamark · 18-02-2010 6:47pm

Good stuff john nice to see someones having a bit of success!Myself and shane were out last night and himself and another fella were out on tuesday night in a spot where some domestic ducks are taking a pounding this last week or so,shane seen 7 foxes in there on tuesay and we seen around 6 last night but they just wont stand still for longer than a few seconds and are constantly moving away from the light its very frustrating!Out again tonight hopefully one or two will slip up.