A week later we're in business. Barry has been kind enough to lend us his Pheasant Catching Device - a sort of cage which incorporates cunning little tunnels into which a dim-witted bird strolls in order to scoff the corn scattered liberally within. But ha! Having entered, the bird brain can't work out how to retrace its steps. It has to sit it out and passes the time by alternately pecking at anything edible, and by flapping hysterically against the cage's wire frame. In due course I will come along with the sack which is to be its passport to freedom.
I grasp the bird by the shoulders -well, where I imagine a bird's shoulders might be anyway - at the top of its wings. We look each other in the eye before I stuff it into my sack. (Gently I assure you.) Being in the bottom of a dark sack seems to have a calming effect on the bird and safely packaged like this we can take it over the hills and far away to be released.A quick shake of the sack over a gate into Wayne's new field and Pheasant No.8 is free to join the 7 others I've relocated in the past few days.
Meanwhile, as I'm going through the CD collection to see which I can recycle as bird scarers (a splendid use for 'Sounds of the Seventies' I think) pheasants Nos.9 and 10 can be seen approaching......
Edited to add:
Later that same day.....
This is pheasant No.11 - a nasty piece of work I think - there's a murderous glint in that eye and a trace of gore on the beak. He vented his fury at being incarcerated by scrapping with his fellow inmates, two other cock birds. He avoided the journey in the sack by scratching my 'brave' assistant who hurriedly dropped him. I imagine he, not the assistant, is now in the undergrowth somewhere....sniggering at me and planning a raid on the pea shoots.
12 comments:
wish sometimes that I could stuff Lolly in a sack...
Love the thought of all those surprised pheasants wondering how they ended up so far from where they started!
It's the way pheasants creep up on you when your gardening and let out an almighty screech that gets me...
Perhaps you could have the dulcet tones of Cilla singing 'Step inside love' near to the entrance to the cage. The once inside it could change to ' I want to be free' by Queen.
Sorry mucked the first attempt up!
Hmmm, number 11 did look a bit feisty. Round these parts they wouldn't bother with the device. They'd just load up both barrels and Poof! Pheasant Heaven.
Not, I should hasten to add, what I would do (am avid pheasant fan - but they are shy and retiring round here and in very small quantities!
Pack some up and send to Jane! She LURVES them....
We used a live trap on mice - 40 we caught, or the same one 40 times - as I stomped back after releasing the mice I had unnerving visions of the mouse already back in the house and laughing at me through the window . . . do you think your pheasants might be doing the same?
Oh I wouldn't want to be messing with number 11!
Kimx
We've had a couple of pheasants wonder from the field into the garden, but it doesn't look like they've been munching on anything, thankfully!
Ahhh, now I need something like that for cats .... feral cats, who have taken to letting themselves in the house, scoffing anything scoffable in sight and then taking up residence in the cat mint and getting throughly stoned!
Must be so disheartening to have the pheasants eat your veg. Can I offer a cat or 3 as a deterent?
As I write there are three deer eating in the garden. Beautiful creatures, but they can leap any fence so are nearly impossible to keep out. The #11 had a murderous look in his eye - I hope you don't meet him again!
M'ear - If it was the right season would they be going in the pot?
Post a Comment