:) Hullo, all! I've just had to re register because, I'm given to understand, the webbie had a dead wood clear out and I got slung? Whoops!

Just to let you guys know; I've emmigrated to Eire and have - as yet and for the foreseeable future! - no phone at home. Thus it's all down to getting miles into town for a swift blast in this 'Cafe'. Time's money here and I seldom have enough time to 'do the fora' anyway. But I'm stuck for a cab home just now and have a bit of time, so .....

Things are SO great here! :D My life's completely ..... well, as I always wished it could be, I guess! But, to topic:

Yesterday I saw a RABBIT! Oh aye; Nothing unusual in that, eh? Tell ye: I heard someone say we got myxi in the late 90's. It's - apparrently - razed the Irish bun's like it did UK in the 50's! I live in deepest countryside now. 200 year old cottage, mile from the nearest country road ( :P ) and think nothing much of looking out my window in the morning and watching the hares mess about on my track. Badgers? Plenty, just along the track. Mink? On the stream, a bit further up and simply road kill over here. Pine Martin (I sh*t ye not!) Local Gard had one break into his Larsen! But rabbits? Been here since before April and that was the first I've ever seen!

Funny enough, that one came out of a farm yard. I wonder if our lot are going 'Hedgehog' now? Maybe he lives beneath a disused hulk of machinery? I'll keep my ear to the ground ..... the one without the DC 10. When I get a hearing aid ....! Christ, I'm getting So clapped out! :lol:

Great to be back. Off for a swift read with my last minutes of time on!

Welcome back Fenn man i new you would liven things up a bit !! I spent some time fishing the moutain lakes of southen Ireland and there are some wonderful old houses stood empty that wouldnt take much to do up. Is it because people have moved their familes nearer to the towns for work?

I'll tell ye; It's crazy over here! I'm just now starting to get the hang of it .....

What it is; Imagine ye've been brought up in an inner city - like me. Back to back housing. Garden like a postage stamp. The lot. What's ye dream going to be? Pretty much what I now have: Little cottage in the middle of no where. Bit of land. No neighbours. The lot.

Now; How about if ye've been born in just such an idyllic place? As most of the guys I now know were? 'Other mans grass ...' n all that! These farmers are now heatedly flogging off their ramshackle (Gorgeous! Dream come true - to a Brit!) home cottages, along with a scrap of land and having these bloody monstrocities built for themselves! :blink:

Irish Farmer aspires to the two story nightmare, with gaudy (I'm talking salmon pink and cream!) concrete ballustrade type walls round them. And they want them up on the road - where people can see them too! Garish bloody nightmares of gothic proportion. At least that's how I see them.

Case in point: Bloke just a few yards down the road from me (well; from the road entrance to my mile long track) lives in a gorgeous little cottage. Tons of lovely and useful, love to dig about in there, out buildings. All the ground around it. The lot.

What's he done? He's having some gothic looking, whack off great, two story mansion built, right over the road! UPVC conservatory, the whole shebang. I wouldn't give ye tuppence for it! It looks like it should be in Knightsbridge. Not Leitrim. And now, I guess, he'll move into that. Sell his wonderfull cottage to some Brit and sit there, looking down on the 'poor souls' burning peat ("Turf") to keep warm, while he fumbles with the Central Heating 'stat! :huh:

Like I say: Crazy! Me? I Love my open fire places. The bits of rotten thatch that dangle down through my ceiling boards. The beetles that scurry around my uneven floors like they belong there - which they do!

I gave up a Really swish, eleven year old bungalow in a select cul de sac in Hull (Really! Hull Does have some really posh bits and pieces, these days! :lol: ) to move into this leaning, cracking, tin over old thatch, wood worm riddled hovel in the bog. If it and I can stay upright for another fifteen years? That'll suit me. If it collapses on top of me before then? I can think of far worse ways and places to go! ;)

Anyway, stearing back towards the more topical: This afters, I was sneaking about in my ditch and decided it was just right for mink (we have more mink than mosquito's here) and that, if I can just keep my Dogs out of it, I'll get some traps down.

Hours later, I'm chatting to the bloke who lives up the hill from me and what does he say? " My Dog chased a huge, buck mink last night! It went down into your ditch ..... " :ph43r: Traps out tomorrow then!

Fenn man it all sounds great. How did you find your dream home? Did you go over and find a place yourself or did you use agents? Are they still good value or is everbody getting on the same wagon. Happykeeper

Hullo, mate. Believe it or not; I bought this place on the internet! I never actually laid eyes on the actual property, per se, till the van pulled in and I jumped out onto my own, bought and paid for, bit of Eire! :lol: Not that I'd reccomend anyone else try that stunt - it's not big and it's not clever! - but if, like me, ye don't drive and simply don't have the time or resources to go chasing all over Eire? Why the hell not?!

And, no; I never even used an 'Agent. I just trawled the net - checked all the 'Agents / Auctioneers too, naturally. I found this place being offered privately and the site gave ye three photo's. One of the cottage. One shot. One angle. Outside. Another shot showed the view from the front gate. Last shot was of some trees, round the back. Did for me. I went after it with a vengeance!

Cost me 50K, sterling. For that, I have myself a double cottage; (one, regular cottage running one way. Another stitched on, end on to the side of the first one. They sometimes make them like that over here. Though most are just the one, dinky place.

I guess most people would say it's in a pretty piss poor state of repair? Half the guttering's shot and there's honestly not a sound window in the place. Lot of windows too! It has a corrugated iron roof, stuck on right over the old, rotten thatch. One cold water tap. No bath. No loo. Desperatly needs rewiring. Most of the skirtings are crumbling - how do ye DPC 200 yo rendered stones?! - big old Stanley range in the kitchen. All but one floor's bare concrete (this one has rotting lino down). ALL the floors are so pissed ye'd think you were. One room simply has No floor. Just a thin sheet of ply over the earth. Quite dramatic fungi coming up around the edges. Open fires or my own Calor gas are the only sources of heating. I wouldn't change it for the world! :)

Being me, I've spent all my money on the outside. Not the exterior. I mean outside. Bought and erected fencing and gates. Replaced the guttering. Fixed up a stock shed my mate / neighbour's given me use of. I'd Love to paint the roof and walls, but I'm buying a horse and cart instead! :lol: Save me my pension on taxi fares!

Now, if a man with a woman in tow wanted to come here? What can I say? Ditch the woman! :lol: Men like me can be happy as sand boys here. Wives and kids would present a whole new set of problems, and solving them would push the price right up. But it's still laughably cheap. Best single bit of advice I could offer would be to do like me: Get Real isolation. Buy a place - semi D(erelict!) or spruce new dorma bungalow - on a road? Ye'll have bloody neighbours peering over ye hedge before it's even half way established.

Other things to know are; If they ask 80K Euro, they won't even look at ye for less than 110. Also, " Under Offer " means ' The Auction's On! Gazzump at will! '. Oh, and if ye Do bother with 'Agents / Auctioneers? Be ready to get used to having ye bloody e mails ignored! :angry:

Then there's Eircom. Biggest bunch of b*****ds since the SS! I've been here since the end of March. Got my phone on - despite having all the wires in place - yesterday! Electricity - if ye already have it - is much faster. If ye don't have it? By god, ye'll pay through the nose to get the cables in, and it takes for ever! I can sell ye a genny, cheap! I came prepared! Half a storm means power cuts, but they don't last long. Sceptic tank costs ye 3K. I reopened the old Thunder Box and flush the ditch with a bucket. Suits me.

Now, veering, as I like to try to do, back towards the more 'Topical' of this place; Mink are the most common road kill I see. Our crows are Hoodies! As a former ardent Birder and Twitcher, who went all the way to Anglsey, to see a solitary and out of place Hoodie, ye can imagine how I felt to find them everywhere here! Soon get used to them though. Now they're just vermin to me. Targets.

And that's where I'll leave it for today: Few days back, I saw one come up from a spot on the stream where I intend to site a permanent mink trap. When I got there, I found he'd dropped a large portion of kitten. Well, they're going to tarmack the track into this place, so I'm holding off setting many traps yet, save them being bulldozed or otherwise disturbed. But, I'm so sick of announcing myself as a Pest Controller / Trapper, without ever actually having trapped anything here yet, I've decided to trap that damn crow and hang him on the gate. Just to show a bit of class ;)

I told my regular taxi driver what I plan to do and said I'd set the trap 'tomorrow'. Sunday. When I get up after tonights kip. I told him to set his stop watch and we'd see what I'm made of. I have a cracked egg in the fridge and a nice collection of half shells stored up in my Pest Control room. I'll stick that buggers flight feather in my hat and let people ask me what that's all about - good advertising in a place like this. Soon the road'll be done and I'll get some more traps out. I'm getting a new hat and figure to adorn that one's band with mink tails. My god; How these people despise the mink!

Fenn man its sounds like you have a very interesting time in front of you? Would you fancy keeping us up to date and perhaps put a few short articles on the main sight about your way of life. Keep trapping and let us all know how you get on. Regards Happykeeper

Sorry I took so long. Just got home from town. I went in as soon as I'd set the crow trap.

Now that I see the photo's worked ..... The silver thing next to him's my Zippo lighter. When ever I show one of my Collector traps I always place my old, matt black, Zippo beside it. It's my water mark. Well, that's my new Zippo. Has a Celtic design on it.

Anyway, there ye go. I did what I said on the can ;)


Piece for the main forum? Fine by me. But what's to write about? Anything in mind, let me know.

Anyone fancy another dead crow? :lol:

That didn't take you long! Anyway a bit for the forum it would be great if you would do a small bit every so often about your way of life living off the beaten track or a series on old traps and the trapping techniques that use to be used. Have a think about it. They don't need to be long articles and if they have a pic to go with them all the better. Happykeeper

B) That's hit the spot, Keeps! Only yesterday, I was meddling with my camera and have discovered it has a function I'm just itching to put to good use!

I have to tread carefully here 'mind, because I'm actively involved in putting a couple of books together - one regarding traps. I wouldn't want to expose that material prematurely. But my own specialist field is the Approved Traps, anyway. I'm thinking more - as ye suggest there - of my 'antique' Collection. This could be a blast! :)

Let me roll it around in my empty head for a bit. I reckon I might just be able to come up with some stuff to make the Boys toes tingle. If we're all anything like me; Reared on a staple diet of Tideline and the Badmington Library Gamekeeping book, and so forth?

Hmmmm ..... Leave it with me ;)