pointless journeys

So Hoppy Lou, my trustee assistant and I just got back from the Bosses farm

where we went to find electric fence reels, standards, gates, alkathene pipe

and other things you need to keep kids entertained round here
but we found nothing.

We also did not find elastrators or rubber rings

but we bought some.

I wanted six elastrators but ATS only had three

(what!? it's raining and boring today)

Oh you don't know what an elastrator is?

It's this fun little implement

What is it used for?

Well you take a lamb (sometimes a calf)

and you pop a little, little rubber ring over the prongs

like so

and squeeze the handles together and make the rubber ring
bigger and bigger until it can fit over

a tail or balls

only on boy lambs though, the balls that is

cause all lambs have tails.

You have to squeeze really hard cause the rubber rings are quite tough

(this is why sheep farmers have rather well developed biceps, one side at least)

and you wrestle the lamb into a suitable position

and slip the expanded ring over the appendage you are removing.

Then you let it go with a bit of a jerk

and volia!

one tailed lambie

(or as North Island Lucky would say docked)

They look at you all insulted for a moment

and then skip off to frolic in the meadows in happy lamb land.

Penelope Darling is losing her tail tonight
please don't tell her cause she is going to be so mad with me
and she doesn't really have a happy lamb land place to go
unless it's by whats left of the raspberries
and that so is not my happy place for her at the moment.