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I was out on the land today, just outside my cottage compound, picking up donkey shit with my little tow truck. My donkey and his mate, the male goat, were hanging around close by. Generally getting in the way and being a right bloody nuisance, as they know to do best. 'Small Dog', my JR pup was dashing about the field in hot pursuit of birds flying high over head. Cattle, calves at foot, grazed peacefully a couple of fields down. Bliss.
Now, there's me, on hands and knees, picking up donkey shit with my gloved hand and chucking it into my wheeled box for transportation to my neighbours spud row. I happened to have my back on the spinney of sitka spruce trees that someone long ago saw fit to plant below the cottage and which Pat ~ the new owner of the land ~ has since fenced in and abandoned. A few of the trees have keeled over and now are deeply overgrown with eight foot high brambles. It forms a sort of semi hollow mound of dark, impenetrable cover.
Then Small Dog started barking at that cover. And I Do mean barking. I turned round to see her standing off from it, hackles ten foot high, barking most efficiently at the looming mound. First from one side. Then she'd rush to repeat the whole process from another angle. Effectively then trying to Bay something that was in there.
That's when I became concious of what I'd been half listening to for a short while now. The nervous 'Pinking' of a Blackbird. The odd, rather understated Chipping of other small, timerous birds. Small Dog too seemed as much trepidated as tempted by what ever was lurking beneath that deep, gloomy cover.
Calves close by. Watched over by determined cattle and a huge Bull. Deep, covered ditches leading from them to here. Birds sounding an uncertain alarm. My Dog, nervously standing off. A donkey. A goat. Me. That cover is barely twenty feet away. Dark. Brooding. Ominous.
I don't mind admitting it. My arsehole screwed down tight enough to strangle a pin. I thought about the rifle. Locked secure in here. I sensed the Dogs uncertainty. And I thought about a Cat, eyeing us all with hungry disdain.
Well. Ye know what it's like when ye a Man. These creatures are my charges. More like my children. And a man's gotta do ..... So, adopting an air of casual nonchalance I Really wasn't feeling just then, I heartily called out, " What's up then, Small Dog? S'ee There? " and climbed over the fence. All the while trying to remind myself that this is Eire. We don't get reports of 'Big Cat' sightings here like they do in england. Not to be silly.
I boldly trampled over to the edge of the cover and peered in. Darkness. A tangle of brambles over long fallen trees. Nothing. Still she bayed. I moved round to another side and searched the tangle once more. Trying hard not to think of Leopards and oh so hoping not to meet with a pair of green eyes staring back at me.
Nothing there now, of course. And, as I straightened up, duty done, with some relief, I was aware of the small bird sounds now coming from some fifty yards down the line. It had passed through. Obviously just a fox, of course. Small Dog's never yet met one and wouldn't guite have understood it.
In fact I smelled the b*stard later. He'd come up 'my' ditch ~ Yes. The ditch ~ and had signalled his disgust at what he'd passed there by pissing against my back gate post. Then he'd gone on up the rise to no doubt check out my neighbours chickens. Good luck to them both.
But, and I don't mind admitting it, for a little there; A scary few moments!
Sean
lol theres still plenty of big cat sightings over here mate. brilliant read
macker
enjoyed that read ditch
always better to check things out when the dogs tell
us things are not right.
all the best
macker
