Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
To inspect the dog tucker thawing there…
Dammit, the dog tucker was still frozen solid in a nine-piece-pack. It’s not that I’d been unorganised, it had been out of the freezer for three days already, but those mid-winter days had been bitterly cold.
With nine active pig dogs to cater for I found the situation appalling. The chilly conditions meant the dogs’ calorie intake should be greater, not less. Now they would have to make do with dry rations, but by tomorrow they would need more than a stale biscuit and an apology to see them through.
Old Mother Hubbard went to another cupboard
Unlocked it and withdrew a rifle from there,
That old woman knew just what was required,
She had to hunt and locate a critter not-yet expired.
The pressure was now on to provide for my canine charges, but Mother Nature was anything other than helpful. During the night an easterly front had trundled ashore from the coastline. The frost-bitten backcountry hills, habitat of dog-tucker-on-the-hoof, were now well hidden amongst low cloud and light rain, conditions known by old-timers as “Scotch mist”.
Despite the miserable situation, I began hunting with two things in my favour. One was a dogged determination to prevail and succeed, the other was my Hikmicro thermal binoculars.
As the drizzle drifted downward and the cloud snuggled itself tight against the geography, I heard a splash in the creek below me. Two mature stags had scented me and were making a rapid getaway towards heavy cover. At just 70 metres they should have been an easy score, despite galloping like steeds in the Melbourne Cup.
The rifle scope proved to be my downfall, and not theirs. The clouds might as well have holed up and taken a nap in either end of the damned thing. So much for the scope producer’s hype and so much to for the coating I’d applied before leaving home. Neither were really the solution for fogging problems that I had hoped for.
I performed a wee haka and said a few choice words regarding both items but neither activity got a deer dead or the dogs fed. Move along Mother Hubbard, move along!
Move I did and before long the thermal binoculars penetrated the saturated atmosphere and ‘bingo.’
High on the hillside across the creek were a handful of illuminated dots moving willy-nilly. Below them, in a fold of the gully was another dot standing still. Because the face was steep, and because I am energy-efficient (aka lazy), targeting the bottom dot became my preferred course of action.
Ooooh, the creek, draining a catchment of permafrost and a range of snowy tops, was notably icier than the chill easterly wind and precipitation.
Aaaah, the zaggazig ascent immediately afterwards quickly warmed the cockles of my heart, and my armpits and my furrowed brow.
Salt-laden sweat and drizzle combined, pausing momentarily in my eyebrows before finding their way downward via the wrinkles on my face. They then cascaded off the point of my chin before trickling down into the never-never of cleavage, belly button and beyond. Eventually they cumulated in my rubber boots, which squelched and farted with every upwards step.
Guestimating location, I paused beforehand and rubbed that troublesome rifle scope front and rear like I was expecting a genie to appear and grant me a wish. Then I squelch-farted none too stealthily forward and saw in the gloom ahead not one but two vague deer shapes – boy-deer shapes – thick necks, big bodies, antlers.
Bum down, rifle up, I shot the senior stag first and noted his trajectory before reloading and swinging onto his buddy. The younger stag made the mistake of running then pausing. He wouldn’t do that twice, a fatal error of judgement on his behalf.
Was I feeling smug now? Hell no, two stags very recently deceased was only one third of the way towards a win on the dog tucker front. Now there was the small matter of getting them down to the 4×4 track far below. The route was boulder-strewn and hazardous and both individuals, even disembowelled and prepped, weighed more than I did – despite my boots brimming with salt-laden sweat and rainwater!
And then? Aha, then – the ‘then’ after I had walked back and returned with my ute. The ‘then’ as each stag was awkwardly assisted from ground zero to bedecked – that heave, shove, fail and fall back again and again till eventually I triumphed. One stag, then two, lifted bodily onto the deck of the truck. The tailgate – shoulder against it, latches forced down – was finally closed and my freight ready for transport homewards.
The job was still incomplete but old Mother Hubbard now had two deer in her cupboard and dog tucker for the morrow. Thanks to the thermal binoculars, I had prevailed. Without them I’d still be walking in the rain, searching fruitlessly in poor visibility – dogged determination was more likely to have got me pneumonia than a deck full of protein and doggy chews.
The mutts have no clue of my quest on their behalf. While I sloshed about, squelched and farted uphill and down – then heaved and failed – and then heaved and failed again – and then heaved and, eventually, won. They lay sleeping, dreaming and twitching in their kennels as the drizzle wafted down, and the easterly wind blew cold.
Perhaps they dreamed of sunshine or pig hunting, perhaps they dreamed of me, but more likely they dreamed of food.
Tomorrow they would eat their fill before sleeping deeply once more. Later, hours later, they’d evacuate their bowels – a portion of today’s hard work digested. and diminished, dropped like a turd on the tundra, and without a backwards glance. The cycle of life, with me as the middle-ma’am, goes on for another week.
