Monday 27 December 2010

A great day's ferreting


It wasn't the biggest bag ever - just four rabbits in fact. But it was a great day out, and a momentous one for my elder daughter Emma's new ferret, Boo. That's him above, with the punk hairdo after a bit of a tussle underground. And below, Emma with Boo and one of my jills - Emma is sporting her furry headband thingy she got for Christmas, and looking a bit more stylish than my usual ferreting companions.


It was Boo's first introduction to working, and he took to it very well - bolting three rabbits into the purse nets, and coming back up straight away. On the last hole (why do we always have to do that 'one last hole'?) he killed one underground. As it turned out, someone long ago had dumped a load of old chicken wire, concrete slabs and rolls of barbed wire into that very spot, and covered it over with earth. That made digging somewhat difficult.


Fortunately we had Emma's boyfriend Steve with us. That's him in the photo above. He did a splendid job of pulling up wire and slabs, then digging down to find the spot indicated by the Ferret Finder (being the oldest member of the party, these days I get to operate the Ferret Finder, and delegate the manual labour). And sure enough there was Boo, watching over rabbit number 4.


After that we decided it was time for a cup of tea and turkey sandwiches, took a few photos and called it a day - one we'll all remember for a long time!

2 comments:

Chris (TheRambler) Dean said...

Looks like a cracking day James, well done for getting out there when all around the rest of us where stuffing our faces with Turkey!!!!!!
Some fine looking eating rabbits there, my freezer is now full of rabbit pies I will be using for my pack ups in the New Year......no more turkey!!!!
Its great to see the family taking part too, Christmas and New Year is a time to be together, even mooching in the fields!!

Well done to you all, and have a cracking New Year, I myself will be cooking up a few rabbits in the field on New Years Eve, it has become a bit of a yearly occurence!!
Lets hope theres no more snow!!

Anonymous said...

It looks like you had a great day out and the punk ferret looks he did to