Yesterday, Saturday, I received this strange phone call from a chap with
and American sounding accent, all I could here in the background was the
sound of trains.  It was Bob who had just arrived at Waterloo Station,
London on the Eurostar and wanted to go ferreting.  He was given the
instructions get the Tube to Euston to get a train for the north west.
I picked him up at Bolton Station just gone 7pm.
 
After meeting some of my ferrets we settled down to watch 3 of the early
episodes of The Last of the Summer Wine, one of which was The Inventor of
the 40 Foot Ferret.
 
I got up at 6 am, I had to make sure that all my ferrets had plenty of
food and water for the day.  Bob got an early morning call.  Striker, one
of my young lurchers, jumped on him.  I thought he was being murdered,
Bob that is not Striker ;-)
 
After loading up the Transit with the purse nets, 7 ferrets and 4
lurchers we set off for Gargrave (the home of Ferrets First) in North
Yorkshire.  We around 9 am and first things first the frying pan went
on and had a bacon buttie.
 
Flower and Arwen were fitted with their locator collars - and were sent
under the hay-bales to see if there were any rabbits in residence but
nothing appeared so we moved on to the bury in the next field.  The
lurchers were extremely interested in the bury and there were signs of
very recent digging as well as fresh rabbit dropping.  I deployed the
long net on 3 sides of the bury and also set a number of purse nets as
Bob was interested in seeing how they worked.
 
Arwen and Flower were placed near holes at the top of the bury with the
intention of working down and hopefully bolting any rabbits either into
the purse or long net.  The first rabbit bolted after about 20 minutes
and headed up the field missing the long net by a couple of inches and
made good his escape.  The two jills were still underground and busily
working and then they came to a stop... I dug down a foot and broke
through into the tube but the girls had moved out of reach.  Not wanting
to dig again (digging can disturb the bury causing the rabbits to desert
it) we played the waiting game.  After a while Arwen appeared dragging
the rabbit which looked dead, I picked Arwen up and she let go of the
rabbit that came to life and moved off I let Arwen go and she chased
after him.  The next minute the lurchers were gathered round a hole, I
dashed over to find that Lucy had the rabbit, I got it off her and
dispatched it.
 
Flower had already emerged from the bury when I introduced Chattox, a
castrated sandy hob.  Chattox didn't bother hanging around either.
However, Arwen did her usual trick and decided that she was going to
explore and didn't emerge for about an hour when Bob moved in very
quickly, after falling down a rabbit hole, to pick her up.
 
We decided to call it day, Bob had seen the ferrets doing what they had
been bred to do, he'd also seen the lurchers working alongside the
ferrets.  He watched me use the locator to find Arwen and Flower... Oh
yes and he shot loads of photographs.
 
After we'd packed all the gear back in the van I drove down to the
village to meet up with Jenny Loweth, the Editor of the UK magazine
"Ferrets First".  Needless to say we eventually ended up at The Masons
Arms a traditional English pub where Bob was introduced to a decent pint
of bitter and also an excellent pub meal where he tried steak and kidney
pudding for the first time.  We must have must have been in the pub for
over 2 hours.  Most of which was spent talking about the way were divided
by a common language.... :-P  Not too sure who was winding who up but it
was a laugh a minute.
 
Jenny and Bob got on well and Bob will be writing some articles for
Ferrets First in the new year.
 
Tomorrow we will be going down to Bolton to get some bottle of Fursty
Ferret for Bob to take back to the USA.
 
--
Sheila
Bolton Ferret Welfare - not a registered charity
 
Declaration Day Quote of the day from Vini Faal, "Alun Michael is
to animal welfare what King Herod was to baby sitting".
 
NFWS web site http://www.nfws.net updated 7th June 2004
Waiting at Rainbow Bridge:- Jill, Deanna Troi, Cameron, Carnath, Button,
Bill, Bobby, Jasper, Inga, Holly, Fergle, Amanda, Sparky, Daniel,
Blackie, Marvin, Claude, Bumper, Kurt, Tasha Yar, Larry, Lily, Ben,
Fritz, Dax, Kelley, McCoy, Brock, Snowy, Dumpling, Buddy, Stumpy,
Treacle, Max, Scrap, Vanessa, Sarek, Paw Paw, Badger, T.D, Spooky,
Stanley, Tara, Oliver, Alfie, Sindy, Beano, Lulu, Scully, Brecon, Lady,
Tuppence, Casanova, Beverly, Geordi La Forge, Piper, Phoenix, Tiberius &
Twiggy.
[Posted in FML issue 4697]