Heavy Load

A dreadful start to the day having to deal with removing Rosie's corpse.

First thing, Angie phoned the "Animal Carcass Removal Agency" & they said they would see what they could do and would phone back. The drivers and trucks were already doing their rounds.

This is our third experience so we are pretty well versed as to what has to be done. Next call was to Farmer Franz to ask if he could come over & lift her from the sand school to a position alongside our drive so that when the lorry arrives they can drag the carcass in. Sometimes, especially at weekends and public holidays, you may have the corpse left lying for several days.

Franz only had his forestry cable winch available so had to drag her 50m across a field. Awful to watch but nothing compared to the winching that then happened when the lorry arrived. Doesn't need to be further described. Luckily they were able to come by just after midday and the job was done. No the subject for a Blip photo.

Financially it works very well. In Germany, as an owner of chickens, horses, pigs, cows etc you have to pay annually into an "Animal Pandemic Fund". Chickens cost I think €0.03, Horses €2.50 pa.It covers your loss should a pandemic break out and you are ordered to slaughter your herd but also heavily subsidises removal & incineration of carcasses under "normal" circumstances. We pay less than €20 for a horse. I think in the UK, it costs many hundreds of Pounds.

As Franz had his winch on, he said he would come back later in the day and pull some fallen tree trunks out of the forest next to the house. Very heavy beech that I would otherwise have to cut into 33cm slices and carry out by hand as the ground is so boggy. Sadly I didn't take any photos of the operation, just a video. Today's Blip is of the trunks after they had been pulled out.

Tomorrow he will try to get back to do the other trunks lying in and around the stream on our property from the tree that took down our electricity line last year.

Thank you, Franz, for both jobs - he suffers as much as we did with Rosie, even though he has experienced this throughout his life with his herd of cows.