Tag Archives: wild dogs

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep . . .

by . Posted on
28 Feb

I do know where to find them.  All dead.  All gone.  Bodies strewn around the farm in various stages of decompositions.  Wanton wastage to the wild dogs.  All my beautiful children gone.  No more kisses at feeding time.  No more chasing them away from the alpaca food bowls.  No more racing antics as they run from one to the next . . . no more watching them grazing quietly on the hill above the house, or racing down same helter skelter when I go to the feed shed with the yellow bucket.

No more pitiful bleating when bollocky boy loses the flock (again!) and wanders the farm over trying to find them . . .

I woke up at 5am on Monday and went to the loo.  Looked out of the window into the grey gloom and saw three sheep being herded in terror.  Raced into Ged and woke him up to get the gun which was locked away in the gun cabinet.  By the time we were both up and dressed there were only two sheep huddled on the hill and no sign of the wild dog.  Typical!  There never bloody is when Ged and his gun are around.

Still, we went for a drive and a wander and luckily found the third sheep hiding with her head under a fallen she oak down by the river, her body screened by a huge clump of weed.  She was exhausted, terrified, in shock.  We fetched the Emergency Essence and dribbled it into her mouth and on her poll.  We reikied and talked to her.  She didn’t appear to be injured and eventually she got up and wended her way back to the others.  She was limping on a foreleg, but otherwise seemed ok.

Ben and I spent the day building a yard below the hill where they have been camping out with the thought that we could tempt them down there with food.  We laboured hard and were proud of the results and our efforts.  But of course they were so traumatised by being hunted every night – so skittish and scared, that they wouldn’t come near us or our brilliant construction.  So we just had to pray.

On Tuesday at feeding time first I tried to tempt them down, and then, in frustration, tried to herd them.  Which is impossible with just one person.  It didn’t work.

On Wednesday the prayers seemed to be working, since nothing else was.  On Thursday we came home and couldn’t see any white woollies on the hill.  I raced in to put supper in the oven and then Ben and I drove up to the top of the hill.  Two sheep.  One badly injured.  We tried to tempt them closer with food but instead they limped off the hill, down the flat and up into the bush.

I had to leave them there and feed the small person and got Ged to sing him to sleep over the phone so I could go out and feed the alpacas.  Then I ‘went bush’ and she had lain down in exhaustion and let me pet her and examine the injuries.  I assured her that she would be ok and went home to fetch a bucket of hydrogen peroxide, clean cloth, and a syringe of penicillin.  Cleaned and dosed her up and realised there was no way I could leave her stuck in the bush all night.  She was a sitting duck, or a lying sheep.  Easy prey.

(Language takes on a whole new meaning out here on the land with Nature as your friend and foe)

So I had to get her home.  We weigh about the same and at first tries it didn’t seem possible that I could move her out.  But sheer grit, determination (some would say bloody mindedness!) and adrenalin fuelled my endeavours.

She was on a hill of loose rocks and leaf matter so my feet could get no purchase and a couple of times we slipped and went roly poly together as I tried to haul her out.  Finally she was wedged by some young trees and I couldn’t budge her.  So I had the bright idea of getting bandages and ropes and hauling her behind the car (I admit that Ged and I started watching Django last weekend which may have inspired me).  I retrieved what I needed from the shed and bound her front legs together (back legs would have been better but one had a deep two inch rip in it that was bad enough already without further stress).  I positioned the car and was about to attach the rope when I realised I couldn’t drag her past the trees.  Back to the drawing board.  I tried to persuade her.  I lifted her up onto her feet and finally she got the messages I had been exhorting into her ears.  And me holding her up we walked step by step down the hill.  I told her that she need only make it onto the flat and then I could drag her behind the car but she was very brave and we probably did 50 metres before she stopped and said she could go no further.  I felled her and bandaged her and ‘hog tied’ her and very very slowly dragged her behind the car to the house.

In retrospect I should have made a sled.  I’ll know for next time.

Got her home, cleaned her up again and liberally administered the Emergency Essence and Reiki.  Covered her with a red blanket so she looked very Red Cross Emergency victim.  And went in to clean up me and the house.  By the time Ged came home (a day early to try and shoot these bloody dogs) she was doing well.  Ged stayed home on Friday to nurse her and work while Ben and I went to preschool and yoga respectively.

When I got home she looked fine.  I didn’t check her before we went to sleep.  But I woke at 3 and after tossing and turning for a while decided to go outside and see what, if anything, was happening, before waking Ged up to go for a walk with his gun.  Fleur as Ben and I had named her when we talked about her in the car yesterday, was in trouble.  Wedged upside down on the hill by the fence.  Breathing really laboured.  Eyes dull, leg so hot and throbbing.  More Emergency Essence, more Reiki in the rain.  But after 15 minutes or so she started spasming and then there was a slowing of the breath.  And then the final breath and she was gone.  I came in and had a hot sweet tea.  And then lay in the dark sobbing for the rest of the night.

Such an emptiness in my heart and on the farm without our little blobs of cotton wool littering the landscape.  I love their wise citrine eyes, the short crop of black hair on the head and legs, sinking my hands deep into their luxurious fleece and imagining all the products to enrich our lives.  I love the shearer and the huge event that is the annual shearing, I love their sweet faces and eager antics to steal every last morsel of food from the alpacas.  I have loved them from near and afar and now they are all gone.

Our last remaining has long been crazy and won’t come near us and I don’t like her chances on her own.

What a waste!  Like a fox in a hen house, the wild dogs have just brought them down, gnawed at them and then abandoned them to the ants, goannas and eagles.  It has just been sport.  Hunting practice.  And it has felt like a war zone.  And now there is a war.  Me against the wild dog population.  I am going to learn to shoot today.  And I am going to hunt them down.  They have wilfully destroyed my ovine family.  It’s personal.

Waking up in a War Zone

by . Posted on
07 Feb

Last Saturday we woke up to a bloodbath.  First our lovely German wwoofer, Matthias, found one dead sheep, then another, then another. Floating in the river or dead on its banks.  Four beautiful girls, all with puncture marks on the inside of their hind legs, victims of a concerted attack by a pack of wild dogs.

We walked the river banks and bed looking for the rest of the herd.  We found one girl resting between two logs with blood around her.  We turned her and found that she had been ripped open and mauled.  The only solution was going to be a bullet, so we fed her and I wept tears of despair and frustration at the senselessness and waste of the attack.  Like a fox in a hen house, this had been a terrorist attack with no other purpose than the thrill of the hunt.

The herd that we had built slowly over so many years, who were so friendly and relaxed with us, decimated.  Mattie had found another dead sheep earlier in the week, and the dogs had taken the lovely little lamb a few days before.  Clearly lamb is on the menu for the feral dogs this autumn.

Mattie is a sensitive soul who returns to Germany to begin his training to be a vet.  I mentioned to him how the energy of the farm had changed overnight – from a peaceful oasis to a place of grief and devastation.  ‘It’s like a war zone’ he said.

We dragged the carcases of my lovely girls into a row beneath the house so that Ged could sit and watch, sniper-like, overnight in the hope that the predator perpetrators would return to feast on their kill.

We found two sheep exhausted and terrorised, perched like goats on a rock on the far side of the river, barricaded behind branches and logs.  No amount of coaxing or tempting with lucerne could get them out and we could see they were injured.  We had to grab them and carry them across the river and tend their wounds.  They hid for two days this week, just so weary and stiff after their night of abject terror.  The little boy recovered mid week and came calling for food at feeding time.  But the ewe was still secreted away at the top of the hill, dragging her leg behind her when she moved.  Mattie and I tried to catch her twice but for a three legged sheep she sure can run fast.

Finally, on Thursday night, we cornered her after she had fled from us down to the river.  In a scissor like movement we approached and she made a dash for it.  Mattie’s long legs in pursuit and he managed to grab onto her fleece and amazing held on and wrestled her to the ground.  We turned her onto her back in shearing position and found a huge bulge of infection around her rump but I couldn’t squeeze it out.  I administered the milky penicillin and then we lifted her, with great difficulty, into the back of the farm car where Mattie held her while I drove to the yards so we could secure her for a week to heal her.

Needless to say there’s been no sign of a dog since.  The howlers are coming at 6 tomorrow.  Normally I have a very live and let live philosophy to the wildlife we are privileged to live alongside.  But when our babies are hunted down I become biblical.  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

The howlers are coming at dawn tomorrow.  I want 5 dead dogs, especially that big black one which has been terrorising the alpacas and sheep for so long.

What a waste.  The wild dogs normally take one or two sheep a year and we accept that as our rate of attrition, but this has been appalling.

The only consolation is the old farmer’s adage ‘where you have livestock, you have dead stock.’ And apparently we had to have this devastation before taking defensive action.  My poor girls.

What makes an Aussie Farmer?

by . Posted on
09 Dec

When I first came here I thought it was the Akubra, the moleskins, the RM boots and the years on the land that made a farmer but now I know different.

It’s the long, hot hours on the tractor.  The stiff neck, hip and back from hours reversing up hills and clearing gullies.  It’s the permanent ‘farmer’s tan’ of face, neck and arms and the leathering of the skin in the hot aussie sun.  It’s the ability to pull a calf out of a straining cow, or pull a cria out of a birthing alpaca.  It’s knowing when to call the vet and when time and patience and a little TLC will heal.

It is knowing and loving and caring for animals.  Being brave enough to decide who goes for slaughter when.   Crying for them when they go, communicating with them beforehand and remembering them always as friends and fellow travellers and family.  It’s the understanding that we all have a purpose and a gift to give and that some of these animals make the ultimate sacrifice, give of themselves, with love and service, so we can eat.  There is no greater gift than that.

It is the watching of the seasons, the listening to the land as she speaks, working with her, nurturing her and feeling her nurture us as we live in her embrace.  It is learning to see and hear her messengers and understand their messages – the scurrying ants, cawing black cockatoos, lying down alpacas and cows saying storm coming and watching the sky turning indigo as it looms.

Seeing the babies being born and the ones that don’t survive – snatched before life has a chance to begin by goannas or snakes or circumstance.  Watching them grow and then mourning if they are taken too soon.  Nature is cruel, life is not guaranteed and ‘where there is live stock, there is dead stock’.

It is watching the eagles wheel and soar and teaching their babies to fly, talking to snakes and not being afraid of them, swimming with platypus, marvelling at the beauty and diversity of Mother Nature and having daily conversations with God and the Angels.  Finally feeling gratitude, humility and awe at this beautiful planet, this wonderful place and life, so precious, so tenuous, so brief.  After a lifetime of dabbling in death defying activities, all of a sudden I don’t want to die, don’t want to leave here, can’t bear the thought of not seeing the trees we are planting bear fruit.

Being a Farmer is all about taking care of the land that takes care of us – that feeds our bodies, nurtures our souls, and allows us and the planet to breathe.  It is hard, hard yakka.  Lifting, carrying, hauling, hurting.  Thankless, endless, relentless and often joyless.  But the rewards are spiritual as we come to see how small we are in the grand scheme of things, how brief our imprint, how enduring and changeable nature is and how we too must learn to bend in the winds of change or be blown over if we stand too proud and strong and rigid.

It is riding out the floods and the droughts and understanding that the feast and famine cycles are natural rhythms of nature.  It is knowing how to make do and paddock and bush fix things and scrape meals together from what is in the veggie patch and the pantry.  Living by the seasons, powered by the sun and becoming ever more sustainable.

It is cuts and scratches and bruises and worn clothes and wrinkles, but it is honest, and pure and worthwhile.  Down here on the farm we piss in the wind, we revel in our nudity, the animals don’t care how old or deshevelled we look, and the dirt is ingrained in hands and fingernails and no amount of scrubbing will get them clean.  And we don’t care.  Because bodies grow old and disintegrate and die and the wild dogs and goannas will feed off them.  Nothing is forever, this too shall pass and we are lucky to have witnessed creation at its most perfect and beautiful and to have immersed ourselves in the natural world.  What will happen after we are gone?  Nature will endure and all our work may well have been for nothing – who knows who will tend Avalon for future gnerations or if it will just be left to run wild and untamed as it was before we came.  And yet still we continue and persevere and keep going – for the love of it, for the deep peace and stillness she brings to our souls.

The Akubra never got worn so I sold it on ebay, I can’t afford moleskins or rm boots but I am a farmer in my wiry arms, in my wide shoulders, in my sun beaten and battered skin, in my tortured hip, in my holey clothes and deep down in my grateful soul . . .

Wild Dogs and Wedge Tailed Eagles

by . Posted on
05 Jan

Happy New Year!
Here on the farm without radio, television or newspapers the days blur into one another like the endless summer days of childhood, and we didn’t even realise that it was New Year’s Eve til mid-afternoon.  Not that it made much difference, we had decided not to go to the annual bash at Steve and Cherie’s with Benjamin in tow – too loud, too much booze, too tired, too happy just pottering on the farm . . . We had a bottle of Bolly in the fridge but didn’t open it – couldn’t be bothered, didn’t feel like drinking, I’m sure another opportunity for celebration will present itself . . . .
Australia very much grinds to a halt at this time of year – everyone is on holiday and businesses are closed for weeks so it really is time to slow down, relax and enjoy hearth, home and family.  It is so quiet here, although for some reason (maybe all the slashing both we and the neighbour are doing) we have recently become home to hordes of sulphur crested cockatoos, who are gorgeous in their flock but make a helluva racket with their cawing.
We had a dead wallaby on the other side so the wedgetailed eagle was in residence for about four days before Ged built a funeral pyre and cremated the wallaby’s remains before it got too potent . . . because we have had such a good extended spring and there is so much feed, there are an incredible number of wallabies (did you know that wallabies breed more in a good season?) and so there are also more wild or feral dogs.  Phee and I had a terrible scare on a run/walk the other day – as usual he was ahead of me and out of sight, and suddenly I heard him yelping and screamed his name and started running.  As I ran, first a wild small brown dog appeared to the right of a big clump of timber debris, then on the left appeared a dingo X.  The face, ears and colouring of a dingo, just smaller, and stockier than a purebred.  My heart stood still as I screamed Phoenix’s name again and again.  Thankfully he appeared, tail between his legs but unhurt as far as I can see.  Terrifying.  And he is so lucky.  Most wild dogs would have torn him apart , I don’t know how he survived (he must have nine lives!).  Needless to say he has been sticking close to his Mummy on our forays over on ‘the other side’ (we have to think of a name for each side of the property, clearly! – suggestions on a post card, please).  I don’t want to get the wild dog shooters onto Avalon if we can help it (normally the neighbours do so that keeps the population under control) but they seem to have become more adventurous and visible this year with the proliferation of wallabies on the pasture.
We often see the ‘wedgies’ free wheeling overhead – they are stunning birds.  And the one who ate the wallaby is often to be found in an old dead gum on ‘the other side’ at dusk when Phee and I go for our walk.  I always have him ‘heel’ when wedgie is around as I imagine the eagle looking at Phee and thinking ‘dinner’!  We also have a sea eagle who patrols both sides of the property – about the same size, just completely different colouring.  And I have recently discovered that not only do we have yellow tailed black cockatoos on the farm, but also red-tailed – gorgeous!

Wedge-tailed Eagle (Aquila audax)

The Wedge-tailed Eagle is a beautiful Australian eagle, and is also one of the largest eagles in the World. They are large creatures weighing an average of 4 kgs, with an average wing span of 2.5 metres. They are a dark brown/black feathered bird, however the young eagles are a lighter brown colour.