Angry Ferdinand

Angry Ferdinand

The early pioneers didn’t do us any favours when they introduced gorse to use as a hedge-cum-shelter plant! It escaped, shooting its little seeds all over the place so it quickly became an invasive pest, and expensive to control. Burning did nothing but stimulate it. I cut my forestry teeth establishing pine trees in gorse areas and the only half-decent tool in those days was a chemical called 245T. It ended up being banned because the manufacturers of the stuff couldn’t eliminate traces of dioxin, which shows the power of some lobby groups. Dioxins can be found everywhere in everyday life, from coffee filters to barbequed sausages and if you’re someone who burns plastic or polystyrene, well you’re releasing dioxin into the air we all breathe!

I prepared a brew of gorse spray and had it sitting on the back of my truck ready to squirt on the gorse over a steep bank below my top paddock. I wasn’t at all concerned about the three bulls grazing not far from the gate, they’d never given me any trouble. I used to leave my bull calves entire because bull and heifer meat realized the top price at the freezing works, which was a head-shaking mystery to me. The end use for high grade beef was for the US burger market. Prime beef going into burgers? Anyway, I used to raise them to the age of eighteen months and send them off to the works to supplement my income.

When I climbed out of my truck to open the gate, one of the bulls looked up, the others took no notice and carried on casually grazing. By the time I was back behind the wheel and had moved into the paddock, Ferdinand was standing there blocking my way! Actually, I never named any of my animals, I merely referred to them by their colour, but Ferdinand is a good name for this bull! Ferdinand decided that he didn’t want my truck to in his paddock! His head was down and he was snorting angrily. I was conscious of the open gate behind me and didn’t want my cattle out on the road, so I needed to move forward but Ferdinand was having nothing of it. He didn’t charge, he just stepped forward and rattled his horns in the radiator grille, which shook the whole truck! I moved forward a little but he pushed against me. I didn’t want to risk tooting the horn!

Maybe it was the sound of the running motor that had upset Ferdinand, so I switched it off and sat in the cab watching what he might do. For a while he kept rattling the radiator grille, which made me bounce up and down like a bunny’s tail, but I felt secure tightly holding the steering wheel. The novelty of it wore off for him, and eventually he walked off to re-join his grazing mates. I waited until they had moved away before I cranked my truck, closed the gate and started spraying gorse. I wasn’t sure what Ferdinand might think about my spraying and the spray pump, so I kept a wary eye on him.  He was ok for a while, and then he lifted his head, aimed at me and came running! Not charging, just a fast trot. Even when he was still a way off, I could hear the rumble in his chest! I was hoping the gorse-gun might save me, so as he came at me, I gave him a face-full of gorse spray, but it didn’t stop him!

The jet from the gorse-gun was quite powerful, but Ferdinand took no notice! Discretion being the better part of stupidity, it was time for me to vacate the scene! I didn’t have time to switch off the gun, or the sprayer motor, I just threw the gorse-gun down, and made a dash for the fence. The hotwire-topped fence was about thirty yards away and I didn’t know how far behind me he was because I didn’t look, but his thumping hooves told me I’d better hurry. I haven’t a clue how I came to be on the safe side of the fence, I’ve never been a hurdler or a vaulter, but I made it without getting a shock! Meanwhile, he patrolled the fence giving me the evil eye and shaking his head. I could see my sprayer, it was gaily wasting chemical because I had left the gun on and the pump running, but I wasn’t going back right then to switch it off! No thank you!

Any wonder I was a bit nervous when it came time to load Ferdinand and his mates onto a stock truck to transport them to the freezing works. I didn’t dare ask anyone to help muster them in case he attacked them! Health and safety, y’know. I erected a temporary electrified alleyway leading to my cattle yards and roped Hooks into sitting on the roof of a shed that stood beside the yards, he was armed with his .303 rifle. I told him if Ferdinand should as much as take one step my direction, he should shoot the bugger! Hooks usually took ages to fire off a shot, always wanting the best angle, aiming at the eye because a head shot didn’t waste any meat! I told him no to muck about and aim at the chest! A bigger target. Ferdinand must have heard me because the three of them yarded without the slightest fuss! Now we had to wait for the truck to arrive.

The truck backed up to the loading ramp and when the driver spotted Hooks with the rifle, I told him we had a wild one! He said he’d handle him once he was loaded, but he was damn sure he wasn’t getting in the yard with three stroppy bulls! With Hooks at the ready, I climbed into the yards armed with a three foot length of alkathene water pipe. The bulls weren’t keen on walking up the race, so I skirted to the side keeping another bull between me and Ferdinand, swishing the pipe to make a whooshing noise. The near bull got the idea and walked half way up the race with Ferdinand following him. I gave the last bull a tap on the rump and he gave Ferdinand a shunt, he in turn gave the first bull a shove. The first bull wanted to sniff and check out the truck, so I paused, and then gave a cowboy call to rev them up! Once the last leg was on board, the driver slammed the door closed behind them!

A week or so later, the stock buyer from the freezing works called in. He told me that lodged in Ferdinand’s hide, were four air rifle pellets! They didn’t damage the meat, but he called to alert me that someone must have been taking pot-shots at poor old Ferdinand! No wonder he was angry!

Who's the Conductor?

Who’s the Conductor?

Of the birds visiting our property through the seasons, the species I like least are starlings. If I’m honest, it’s their stinky droppings I don’t like, I’m not at all fussed on  their messy nests either. If allowed, they nest in sheds and crap over tractors and implements, which probably isn’t very healthy, certainly it’s not very pretty! They drop as much nesting material as they weave into their nests, and who knows why they don’t bother to retrieve it. They also nest under the engine cowling of tractors and have caused many a fire. Each spring, one used to nest on the top of the radiator on my tractor, she would raise her young there even though sometimes, they must have nearly cooked, because radiator can get pretty hot sometimes! One of the adults became chopped-up starling when it flew into the fan, which wasn’t a nice thing to witness. But I didn’t dislike them enough to destroy their nest.

From a distance, starlings appear to be black, but in the sunlight they have those rainbow colours of oil when it sits on water. But the common of garden starling can’t hold a candle to the superb starling which is worth a mention. It’s common over most of East Africa, and not afraid of people, even so, I was never able to creep close enough to catch a decent photo! They look like a talented child has painted them, with their orange belly, topped with a white band and then an iridescent blue chest. Their head is black and the rest is pretty much the iridescent blue colour except around its bum, which is white. It looks at you with a white eye, centred black.

Anyway, back to ordinary starlings. For just a few weeks when the light is right, as I head out for my morning walk, I pass by a stand of thirty year old Eucalyptus trees, the roosting place for starlings. It is also the roosting place of sparrows, ordinary, cheeky, house sparrows. The starlings seem to be happy to share their space with their smaller cousins. The sparrows, and there must be two hundred of them, wake up at sparrow-fart! Well that’s what my Dad taught me! They start chirping, all at once, not one starts before the others, they just start in unison. They chirp away, excitedly for perhaps five minutes and just as suddenly they stop, in unison!  There’s silence for perhaps a minute and then, again in unison, with a flurry of feathers they fly off in a cloud of flapping wings as the leave the tree canopy but then fly off singly or in groups in all directions. How do they pre-determine which way they are to go in search of breakfast?

The moment the sparrows have dispersed, the starlings start up their chattering, not a single one starts, they tune up in complete unison. Perhaps they are planning their day? The chattering is loud and a bit raucous, the same as when they settle down for the night. The chattering is shorter than that of the sparrows, but just as suddenly they stop and silence reigns again. Maybe they’re taking a breath. Because they are a bigger bird, the feather-flurry is louder, but they all take off in unison, not in a murmuration cloud, they seem to have sorted out which group flies where, and off they go in all direction, some of them fly straight down to our lawn, where they find insects, and grubs to break the night’s fast. They seem to leave the worms for the blackbirds and thrushes, both birds arrive much earlier.

This business of suddenness and unity is a curious thing. The same thing happened at Makumira. We had a large lawn, but no glass in our bedroom windows. Our windows were just covered with mosquito netting, so the night sounds, some pleasant, some not, wafted in. Whenever it rained, frogs emerged at night, and they sang until daylight. During the day, there were none to be seen, but at night, there must have been thousands of them! They were probably one of the species of screeching frogs, tiny, wee blokes, mainly brown for camouflage, that hide in the leaf litter during the day. But en mass at night they kick up a veritable racket! There was never a lone frog calling, all would start up exactly at once, continuing for perhaps a while, and then they would all stop completely for perhaps ten minutes before they started up again! The cycle continued throughout the night. We didn’t find them to be particularly bothersome, but when I was awake, I listened for a lone one. But in vain!

It’s fun to imagine some sort of conductor waving a baton, keeping order and being strict with the orchestra, but these are little miracles of nature, done for a reason I haven’t figured out, but something to watch and enjoy should we take the time.  

Cast!

Cast

Anyone who has had anything to do with sheep will know that sheep can become cast. Usually they are heavily pregnant, or have a full fleece that becomes heavy when wet. They lay down, roll over on their back and can’t get back up. If they’ve been cast for a long time, their guts settles in a different position. That’s because they lay down chew their cud, so their stomach is full of grass. When the farmer tries to stand them up, their balance is up the pole and they can’t walk straight, or they may fall over. If left for too long cast sheep will die.

A television news item caught my attention. Housing is the big problem of the decade and the housing minister was berating the young Treasury people for not getting all the facts right, in his opinion. He said that these young bean-counters were just out of university so didn’t have enough life experience to understand the importance of social justice. Well, I don’t know about the people in Treasury, but if the minister is correct, how come university graduates are advising government ministers? Other than my question, what the minister said struck a chord with me.

Back in the day, I mean those old forestry days, university graduates used to turn up at District Office, fresh-faced and full of sitting-on-bum knowledge. Forest Rangers on the other hand followed a different path, based on theory and hands-on practical aspects, and all under the auspices of the Forestry Training Centre. The first posting of a Ranger Trainee on-forest was where the boss knocked off any rough edges. Basically, Rangers were forest managers and the university bods became Foresters assigned to District Office, their role was to give the forests additional support.

 It was never written that the boss was to knock the rough edges off the young Rangers, nor was it written that the Rangers should re-educate the Foresters, but that’s basically what happened. They used to come onto the forest with all manner of ‘radical’ ideas and insist that we try them, the only trouble was that there’s nothing new under the sun and all the theories had been tried and most rejected. We couldn’t really refuse to try their suggestions, and those of us that had been on one forest for a long time, could take them to spots where their radical idea had been tried and failed in the past. If that didn’t work, we’d carry out their idea while they were on-forest, but as soon as they were back in their city office, we returned to our proven way.

In a career of close to thirty years on the same forest, and with a new bod turning up every two or three years, I did my share of re-educating. Fundamentally, to achieve anything in forestry (and other industries), you need people to perform the work, and in forestry it’s hard, dangerous and physical work. Workers were usually happy enough to carry out the tasks as long as they understood the required outcome and management showed some concerns for worker-conditions and welfare. University graduates didn’t tend to understand the principle.

Here’s a couple of figures that have stuck in my head: to remove a half inch diameter branch using a (hand-powered) jacksaw takes one swipe, while removing a three inch diameter branch takes thirty four swipes.  One proposal was to manage the crop in a way that resulted in the half inch branches growing to three inches simply because the crop was thinned too early! There’s more to it than that but it’s enough to show that by using a different crop management regime, conditions for the workers is easily manipulated.

Phil was one of the last of his bunch, and to be fair, he didn’t rock the boat too much, but he was hopeless in the bush! He had no sense of direction, half the time he was wandering off and becoming lost. He and I would be measuring or checking on trees, and while I wrote the details in my notebook, he would wander off in some random direction, nowhere near where we should be heading. I couldn’t work out if he was counting pine needles, chasing birds or looking for magic mushrooms! I found it best to sit and wait until he’d finished whatever it was that had taken his fancy, sooner or later he would call out and I would give him regular whistles to guide him back. He wasn’t too good on his feet either, so his boots, or undone laces, kept being caught up in fallen branches and he would fall flat on his face... or backside!  I could hear him crashing and bashing as he made his way back towards me. He’d never make a hunter!

Anyway, Phil and I were to meet on a new block of land to discuss appropriate chemicals to be used for weed control. We were to meet on-site at 9:00am, and I found his vehicle parked on the side of the road, but Phil was nowhere to be seen! He had wandered off somewhere! I called out, but there was no reply. Maybe he was away taking a dump, if so, he was unlikely to advertise what he was doing! I tooted the horn, nothing! I walked up a steepish ridge, looking in all directions as I climbed, but there was no sign of him. As I made my way back, I remembered telling him about an outcrop of rocks where there was one tall rock covered in guano; the roosting site of a Karearea, a rare New Zealand Falcon. I made my way there.

The rocks are weathered limestone that have been jumbled up by some violent geological event. I was still a hundred metres away when I spotted a couple of boots, upside down in the middle of the outcrop! Closer, I heard him calling me - faintly. The boots had legs in them! He was arse-down like a half-open pocket-knife, cast, between several rocks. His legs were straight up in the air and his arms were pinned above his head! He would have been stuck there for the duration, there was no way he could have extracted himself! He could only breathe shallowly, which is why he wasn’t able to call out loudly to me!

Don’t ask me how he managed to end up in there! Phil’s a big fellow and it took a bit of grunt for me to pull him out! I yanked on his arms, until he complained, and I yanked on his legs, one at a time. After he was loosened a bit, he was able to wriggle free. Poor bugger was bruised, his neck as stiff and he was a bit shaken! He wasn’t keen on talking chemicals anymore. So I sent him off home.