Good Week, Bad Week

Time has zoomed on this year and I've not updated the blog. This week has been a mixture of highs and low. Firstly we started with good news that Western Power has agreed to remove three telegraph poles and all their spaghetti electricty wires and allow us to put all the cables underground, so the view across the yard won't have a network on hanging electricity cables and it means only one telegraph pole with trees for a back drop. So work has started on digging the trenches on the drive this week. The only losers will be the swallows in the spring who won't have any cables to sit on.
Then last Thursday (I was away on a first aid course), Rob went to let the Indian Runner ducks out onto the pond for the morning but to find a massacre. Two ducks dead, three badly injured and one in shock. He suddenly heard a sound turned round and saw a mink. Imagine my sadness when I returned that evening to hear what had happened. Talking to neighbours they said there had once been a mink farm next door, but that was fourty years ago and no sign of mink since. Trust our luck that this mink had got through a small gap in the drains. We tried to nurse the three injured ducks, but their necks were so bad we had to put them down, which left one on its own. After ringing around various breeders we located one lone white drake and quickly brought him home to keep my grey duck happy.
Well we thought everything was fine with a local gamekeeper coming along and to lay some traps incase the mink returned and yes he did today. This time he came along the leet from our neighbours into the small run where the two ducks had been put for the day, but Rob and my brother saw him and quickly trapped him under the stone slabs in the yard. So he was despatched with a 410. I just really hope the local gamekeeper is right and there will only be one and we do not have any further visits.
I am off to see a man in Okehampton who says he may have some suitable Indian Runner ducks for me so my two can have some more mates.