by Daily
Spent last night at the farm so we could do a job that requires working in both the evening and the morning.
Baiting feral predators with 1080 is not pleasant work. Boring, smelly and ultimately rather sad as it is not a pleasant way to kill. It involves driving along slowly dragging a scent trail using a very fragrant carcass and stopping every two hundred hundred metres or so to bury a bait in the trail. In the morning we collected the untouched baits, about half of the total laid out were undisturbed. The bait we were using is engineered to be particularly attractive to foxes. By the spoor found this morning we think foxes took quite a few though it’s always possible one fox ate a few in a row, it looked like a pig maybe took a couple and a goanna made off with another. The lizard should be fine, the pigs and foxes not so much.
In the process we did witness one one of our target species, a fox, harrying a flock of sheep and lambs. Still not comfortable with it.
This morning I also helped to butcher a lamb. Well mostly I held the trays and scrubbed the equipment down afterwards. The body had been skinned and quartered and was semi frozen so cutting was done with the butchers band saw. It was quite fascinating, like a 3D MRI revealing the connections between the lumps of meat we buy. Our freezer is now full to bursting of family raised lamb and it is kind of curious to think we will be eating that one animal for weeks to come.
The HDD hasn’t saved my computer. Freezing and bluescreens have become common. I’ve finally reached a decision and have opted to use a small inheritance to replace my laptop. The hunt is now on to find a suitable replacement in budget. The tyranny of choice applies here, I know from experience I need to narrow selection down to two or three options at maximum so that I can be happy with my purchase.
Creative
Still looking for a suitable premade contract. Hesitant about putting to much effort into painting on this computer at the moment as it is locking up pretty often.