I spent the first part of the morning sorting through my beehive equipment in the store room. This seems to be a regular activity and, despite careful planning, I always seem to need to dismantle a head-high stack to get to the item I need. In this case I needed a couple of hives.* One is for the nucleus colony that I created last Thursday, and the other is for a beekeeping talk that I will be giving later on in the month.
I then decided to take the two youngest dogs for a walk. At this point I will take a slight diversion in the narrative, and advise that 30% had tidied up the utility room. As a consequence the dog leads were nowhere to be seen. I checked the coat rack and also the cupboard where the dogfood and other canine paraphernalia is kept. There was no sign. I then went on to check the stool in the kitchen ... an occasional site for the dumping of dog leads. There was still no sign. At this point I called upstairs and enquired about their whereabouts. 30% advised that they had been placed in the brown handbag hanging on the coat rack ... I went with "how far down my search list was that location?" instead of "what on earth made you think that was the best place to put them?"**
We then headed out for a walk, and this was the point at which my plans went awry.
As we headed towards the bridge over the stream Hobson and TB charged across and headed to the right. I thought they may have disturbed a pheasant. This is not unusual, so I headed to the left calling them as I walked. After about fifty yards I turned and saw no sign of the dogs. I called again and Hobson came charging towards me. Despite repeated calling there was no sign of TB ... Oh Shit!
I wandered back towards the bridge and spent a good few minutes calling and listening for him. Now TB does like to explore, but, up until now, he has always returned reasonably promptly. This non appearance was out of character and I was starting to be quite concerned.
I gave 30% a call to let her know about his disappearance, and she advised that she would get in the car and check out the lanes in the vicinity. I circled the small patch of woodland, where I thought he had disturbed the pheasant, calling and listening. There was still no sign. After two circuits I called 30% again and let her know that there was no sign of him. She suggested that I should start heading home.
As Hobson and I started to head homeward I continued to call TB on a regular basis. We came to the field that leads up to the ridge near home, and, I took the decision to turn right rather than left. This would take me, roughly, in the direction that I thought TB had gone. As we reached the furthest corner of the field there is a bridleway, and, on a whim, I decided to wander down it.
As I walked down the path I could see out across the fields, so I climbed through a gap in the hedge to get a better view of the fields across which I assumed TB had run. I called a couple of times and the little fucker appeared out of nowhere.
It is fair to say that I was incredibly relieved. He was put on a lead and a call was made to let 30% know that he had been found.***
I think we may be considering a GPS tracker for the little sod!
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* Each hive needs a stand, floor, brood box, crown board and roof. The roofs were right at the bottom of the stacks at the back.
** When taking account of the fact that we have a cupboard filled with doggy stuff! A far more sensible place to put them.
*** Clearly he had heard me calling and headed back towards me. He actually tracked across about half a mile of fields he had never seen to find me, so there is nothing wrong with his recall and terrain crossing skills. It is just that he is bird obsessed and won't come back until he has lost interest in the pheasant.
Post Script
My normal walk is about 6,200 steps and just over two and a half miles. Today I walked about ten thousand steps and covered four miles, most of which, was across the fields.
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