Today has been all about catching, neutering and dispatching crayfish.
Oh, the joys I hear you cry!
Well, it turns out that our government's insistence that we add the American signal crayfish to our rivers without thinking of the consequences back in the seventies is backfiring in astronomical proportions.
To try to save the ecology and topography of the local landscape there is a 3-year trial to see how population control affects them. Large males are neutered and all others caught are culled. It is illegal for them to go back into the water. The neutered males should help repress and predate the rest of them and we have a special license in order to release them back to whence they came.
From the second crayfish onwards, I ended up as dispatcher. I apologised to every single one of the poor, beautiful little bastards.
On the plus side, the sun shone despite the evil wind and we sat on a beach in an unpopulated valley for a rest. Bliss!
Talking of little bastards, I put the pigs in together again whilst I cleaned one of the cages out. Fuck me, I have never seen a ball of fluff with so much vitriol that needed unleashing on another! It's been a day and a half since they lived together. A DAY AND A HALF! FFS!!! It is well and truly disappointing...
