It’s been a full Moon for the past few nights and a good opportunity therefore, to spend the wee small hours out in the fields and the woods keeping an eye on some of the Deer.Armed gangs of city poachers tend to be more active when they can see what they’re doing a bit better and it’s nice not to have to depend on NVE when the Moon is illuminating the landscape as brightly as it’s been doing this weekend.I want to be with my wife and and helping her out during the day and Tess, the puppy, needs constant attention and training as well (remember, Tess starts life as a ranger’s dog almost as soon as she’s had the last of her shots), so I’m not able to get much daytime rangering done at the moment. The middle of the night therefore, is a good time to be doing something useful and I can at least be out there watching over a few of the local Deer who tend to be a bit more dippy than usual at this time of year!My wife goes into hospital next week to undergo a new procedure that involves injecting several of the vertebrae in her spine with a cementing compound because the cancer has caused a kind of osteo-porotic condition resulting in seven of her vertebrae fracturing and one collapsing altogether! She’s still mobile however, although in a fair degree of what she only describes as “a little bit of pain”, but it’s far from that and totally without respite….and she still insists on going for our walks (albeit slowly)!
The amazing thing is, she never complains about it either and when a chap (who I’ve never liked particularly) from up the road stopped us the other day and immediately started going on and on about how he’d dislocated his shoulder and how painful it was and about how much sleep he was losing, I couldn’t resist saying that “well, actually, my wife’s spine is broken in eight places, but we’re just off for a walk up the hill!“Why is it that most men are such pathetic w*nkers when it comes to pain?Oh, and when it comes to why we don’t encourage armed police response units to help tackle the poacher problem…We all hate firearms of any description in the UKNR (probably because we’ve all seen first-hand exactly what they can do in the wrong or the right hands) and the last thing we need alongside us out in the dark, dark woods is a bunch of coppers with semi-automatic pistols tripping over stuff (and each other) and shooting themselves in the bleepin' foot….or. worse still, slotting one of us!We’ve all seen the police training with firearms in the past and the old saying that “the simple act of WANTING to own a firearm is also the single most important reason for NOT being allowed to have one” was never more pertinent believe me!Meanwhile, let the thicko poachers have the firearms….We’ve got cameras and brain cells on our side….and a Nobby! Winter Wasp
Her majesty here suddenly turned up in our living room today (14thNovember)! That’s quite late in the year for a Wasp, but it’s the fertilised females that survive the Autumn and hibernate through the Winter. Then they re-emerge in the early Spring to begin a new cycle of life.Meanwhile, somewhere indoors like a nice dry attic or a garage or even behind a bookcase in your living-room will serve perfectly well as somewhere to bed down for the colder months!
