Be prepared

Yesterday I had planned today's timetable down to the very minute and it was to include a potentially great Tractor Tuesday posting. Within the first hour, the whole plan was blown.

I had fallen asleep on the sofa watching TV when at shortly after midnight Angie burst into the living room saying come out to the stables, a fox has attacked the geese and one is in very bad shape.

Dashed out sadly too late to help the one goose despite Angie's caring stroking. The fox had obviously bitten her in the neck and she was now dead. There was no wound to be seen on the surface and very little blood. The other two seemed unhurt. We quickly moved them into a small totally closed storage room. The dead goose was packed into a plastic bag and an airtight container.

A few hours late Angie was on her way to Munich and I slowly started to try and work out what to do with the goose. Basically, there was no more human use to be had.

Last night I should have bled her out, popped her in boiling water, plucked and taken out the innards. Perhaps I could have done something this morning to get some cat & dog food but frankly no longer had the stomach. So set off with the dogs into the forest with a sack over the shoulder and found a spot with loads of fox and badger lairs where she was left.

Such an attack really makes one cook with anger but with time one comes to accept it as part of nature and so leaving her to the foxes is not as hard as it seems.

Then back home to sort out the chicken and goose housing. The horse stables had always been a temporary measure and not having had a fox attack for years, I thought we had time. Now the geese will spend the night in a totally closed hut in the 2m high fenced off chicken run. Danger still exists during the day as all the poultry are free to wander where they will, including the forest and as we know from the past, the fox is often very active around midday.

All of that had put paid to Tractor Tuesday although I did get a quick snap of Farmer Franz doing some grass collecting in his dust-covered New Holland and thought it wasn't up to Tractor Tuesday standards.

Although I had taken a much closer shot in the morning instead for a long shot, taken during the evening dog walk, of a scouts camp, a group from Dillingen on the Danube about 60km due north of here. They come every year for a week, a field being made available by Farmer Blank I think I bliped them last year on another site. I think there are about 140 persons in total and there is a religious connection of some sort.

It is a few years since I was on a scout camp but I remember digging holes in the Mendip hillsides - in the Blip you can see the modern day equivalent - a bank of six portable toilets. Digging the holes had not been half as bad as refilling them with the turf at the end of the camp!

Back home to take advantage of Angie staying over in Munich overnight. Couldn't find any discos open in Ottobeuren this evening so ended up cooking lamb bones and then scrapping off meat - dogs should enjoy but frankly would be better to starve them in the hope they get hungry enough to kill a fox or two!

Tractor Tuesday delayed......