Category: Personal

Coypu – Nutria – A Global Problem?

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Based on last night’s trail cam the little blighters did not come up off the full river, nor did they cross the bridge. It is pissing down today. I walked around the pond and at the edge of the property I noticed what appears to be a freshly chewed hole in the wire mesh fence. The mesh wire is more than a couple of millimetres thick. That is some chewing.

I’ll monitor the hole tonight and if they come through, I will extend a single strand of the electric fence to cover the hole. I might run it wilderness side to protect the fence.

From the internet these coypu are a problem in Europe, Japan and USA.

I have read some interesting ideas some of which might not be accurate. The Americans prefer guns. Though on one forum I saw juicy fruit chewing gum mentioned.  Juicy fruit has a strong odour. The protagonist suggests that the Coypu cannot pass this so they die of constipation. Another suggestion was chocolate Ex-lax laxative. Apparently, this causes them to shit themselves to death.

When I was a kid, as a prank, I offered one of my school friends some Ex-lax. I even told him it was laxative chocolate. He ate it, nevertheless. Half an hour later he had to leave class in something of a rush. People sometimes do not believe the truth.

Clearly, coypu are something of a hobby / irritation for many around the globe.

They were introduced into Japan during the second world war to provide fur…

You learn something new every day…

We have some lemon flavoured Movicol in the drugs store and I can probably source some industrial grade Pico-lax before my next colonoscopy…we have loperamide and racecadotril or acetorphan, too.

Hmn….

The Coypu Saga Continues…

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Over the last few days, the river has been in flood and flowing very quickly. Previously we have had no Coypu visits when it has been like that. So, I put the trail cam outside my office to confirm the re-appearance of the new hefty tom cat. Sure enough, he visited and sniffed the pissing tree during the night. He is probably not feral as he looks very well fed.

This morning, I inspected the electric fence in the corner of the property. The fence had been interfered with and some of the wires had slipped their guides.

Here is what a big Coypu does when it gets shocked {from February last year}. Turn up the volume. You can see an earthing spark in the infrared images.

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As you can see the Coypu jumps, grunts and disturbs the fence. I am reasonably sure that something got shocked last night. BUT the witness sticks at two point of ingress into the pond were untouched.

So, I have repositioned the camera for tonight and placed witness sticks at all the points of entry into the pond.

Perhaps we have deterrence, perhaps not.

Maybe I can put some antipigeon spikes on the wall to the right in the video above, down by the river… if the blighters are accepting the shock for a nice midnight snack….

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Do Coypu Get Used to Electric Shocks?

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When I was ~ 11 years old my father insisted that I read “Don’t Die in the Bundu” which is a bushcraft survival manual for sub Saharan Africa.

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I enjoyed it and built prototypes of several of the traps / snares.  I have a reservoir of unusual knowledge for someone who spent their adolescence and early adulthood largely in the city in the UK. I can track a little.

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Passport photo taken at the GB High Commission in Lusaka a little before my tenth birthday.

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I was involved in a fatal boating accident around that age 11 on the Kafue River in Zambia. My younger sister and I along with a younger boy went fishing with three African game wardens / rangers in a small rowing boat. On the way to the fishing grounds a hippo came up under the boat and capsized it. One of the rangers could not swim so he drowned. We swam to an island. The remaining two rangers followed. One was taken by a large crocodile only a few metres from where we stood. Later we had to island hop to get within shouting distance of the camp. Having witnessed a crocodile attack you might imagine the hesitancy getting back into water.

Last night I put witness sticks on to the pond ingress points used by the Coypu. The patterns were disturbed at two locations. I had the trail camera looking at the bridge and another part of the bank. I have learned from academic literature on this subject that Coypu don’t climb well. They did not use this root. But they were in the water of the pond overnight. I am guessing they are young males forced out of the den by dominant daddy Coypu who from prior video has a big set of cojones.

I will reposition the camera tonight. I have read that some animals develop strategies for passing electric fences like running fast so as to use the time between pulses. Some learn to jump. There is a risk reward balance. If the food is nice they might tolerate the shock.

There is another possibility that the Coypu are hiding in the pond during the day and do not leave.

Depending on tonight’s footage I have several options.

1) I can fit a fourth strand to the electric fence to make it higher, I have the kit already.

2) I can source a different power supply with shorter gaps between pulses and increase the energy up to 1 Joule. A wet Coypu has got to be a good conductor.

3) Some people apparently have had success with cat litter. I could collect some cat turds and put them down by the ingress from the river.

4) I could try to snare them, but I am not sure I could euthanise.

Hmnn…

Dreaming and Rāja Yoga

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“The trick in setting up the dreaming does not lie in looking at things, but in sustaining sight of them when they are no longer in sight. Dreaming becomes real once you have succeeded in bringing into sharp focus anything you bring to mind, for then there is no difference between what you do when dreaming and what you do when you are not dreaming.”

I think it fair to say that I am artistically challenged, I am not good at sketching. In school when there was a class mural for assembly, I was allowed to do the pine trees. I can however visualize well, perhaps very well.

There are many different notions on dreaming but the Toltec aphorism above suggests a visualisation perhaps in a meditative state. Setting up the active dreaming starts with the visualisation of a yellow rose. This is the Western analogue of the Eastern lotus. I have done both approaches. The idea is to open up the heart centre and connect it vis throat to Ajna.

When I am meditating, I look like some geezer sat in a chair with his eyes closed.This is what is going on inside.

In January 2009 I had been meditating on the Caduceus slowly building the form over weeks.  Here is an attempt to sketch what went on in a half hour rāja yoga or active dreaming meditation. If you take you time the form stabilises and becomes reproducible.

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There are many models and if you look closely, you can see a re-presentation of kabalistic Otz-Chiim or Yggdrasil of the runic shaman or Asvattha which preceded the Hermetic Caduceus according to Blavatsky.

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Attitudes to non-concrete science have changed since the days of Prof. James Emerson Reynolds FRS.

James Emerson Reynolds (8 January 1844 – 18 February 1920) was an Irish chemist who was the first scientist to isolate thiourea and developed the “Reynolds’s test” for acetone.

Reynolds was a member of a number of institutions, including the Institute of Chemistry of Great Britain and Ireland, the Society of Chemical Industry, of which he was president from 1891-91, the Chemical Society and the Royal Society. In 1919 he had a serious accident, which was followed by a stroke. He died at his home 3 Inverness Gardens, Kensington on 18 February 1920. The chemistry department in TCD have his original specimen of thiourea on display.

Preparing for the Annual Toad Migration

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Earlier this year, in February, I put up a three strand electric fence to try to deter the Coypu coming onto the property and eating all the lotuses on the pond. It worked.

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This year we had a magnificent display of flowers and no Coypu turds. The availability of fresh shoots in the wild has dropped as we come further into winter. They managed to find a way in by the bridge in October. Here are four of the blighters I blocked this off with wire mesh at end of October.

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The family of Coypu coming up from the river…

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So, we have had no Coypu sign until about a week ago. I found some chewed iris shoots. I set up the trail camera and got one returning to the river hesitantly through the electric fence. I did not see it get shocked but I heard the audible click as 0.25 J earthed at kilo Volts through the Coypu. The animal seemed to be coming from another direction. I set up witness sticks on the river bank and by a hole in the fence. The little bugger was coming through the fence. I blocked it last night with one big and one medium sized pine fire logs. He shifted the smaller log last night. I saw some Coypu sign, damaged iris shoots. There are two fairly hefty fire logs there now.

Yesterday evening when checking the fence I came upon an electrocuted toad. For an animal ~50-100g I guess 0.25 J is too much. I am surprised that it was on the move. We have had an inordinately mild time of it. In general, we get up to 60 toads and frogs at any one time in the pond for mating. I wondered if the annual migration is beginning early.

Today I have put a few more posts up near the old ingress route for the Coypu and lifted the bottom wire so that at no point is it less than 6cm from the ground. That should be enough room for the amphibians but not enough for the Coypu…

We shall soon see if the toad migration proper is beginning early.

Another harbinger of anthropogenic planetary warming?

A Dead Rat, No Nads and a New Tom

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Since Felix the feral tom cat has gotten back from the vets without his bollocks things have started to change in the garden hierarchy. The other night we heard a fight. Felix has taken to sleeping in a different position in the garden. All the animals enter through the big three metre tall hedge.

Yesterday I noticed, just outside my office, a dead rat. It had rigor mortis and was not fully mature. There is a “pissing” tree approximately three metres from my left hand. Gandalf the now neutered feral female has the habit of leaving me vole noses and entrails, on the window sill about a metre from where I sit.

Last night I set up a trail camera on the patio outside my office. At ~3:45 AM a hefty striped cat appeared. It sniffed the tree and started to piss on it. This is something like the eighth cat to visit. It is possible that the tom brought the dead rat.

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Felix who probably got Gandalf up the duff before they were operated on has started rubbing himself against our legs. The vet suspects that he might have feline AIDS. Before he would not let me get within a couple of metres. Gandalf has been angling to get in the house. She is becoming a trip hazard. They have started sitting on the back door mat. Waiting impatiently to be fed. This behaviour was hers and has been copied by Felix.

I am starting them on a course of aromatherapy. I have applied some malt vinegar to the mat. It keeps Gandalf at bay but Felix seem more immune to the smell. He even sniffed some blue roll soaked in ammonia. He is often snivelling and has a near perpetual cold. I know by experiment that neither cat likes the smell of petrol

If I can break Gandalf’s habit Felix will follow suit.

Is the new cat a regular visitor? Will it attempt to acquire more territory like Israel in the Golan Heights and West Bank?

We shall see…

Walking in Different Circles

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Yesterday it was blustery and with Welsh mist in the air. We chose to go up to the coast. With only three official shopping days left to Christmas we reasoned that Christmas lunacy would be inflicting the town centres. We travelled during “witching hour” or French two hour lunch time. The roads were quiet and up at île Renote it was deserted. I joked that there had been a zombie apocalypse which we were not aware of. In all of our nearly six years it was the most deserted we have seen it. They are still clearing up the devastation visited by storm Ciaran in November last year. We did the circuit and maybe saw half a dozen people and a dog. We said “bonjour” a couple of times in passing. Now that it is off season the locals greet each other.

People have asked us what we are doing for Christmas. They don’t get it when we say, “nothing”. We have received one paper Christmas card and an ecard. We have sent one card. We will probably go for a walk fog permitting in the morning and I will cook a roast dinner later. There are no decorations, no tinsel, no Christmas jumpers and no obligatory work do. We are essentially, that is in essence, out of the Christmas loony loop, in a different circle.

What is important to any circle or peer group varies. Earlier this year on LinkedIn I was able to satisfy my curiosity about what had happened to my year class for Chemistry at UCL. I was slightly surprised at how many had retired at age 60-61. I was the baby of the year with an end of August birthday. Which meant I got my degree aged 20. Because I got one less mark than Sue, I did not qualify for the last SERC quota studentship and had to look further afield for my Ph.D. place. Many of them stayed put and did their Ph.D. at UCL. I lost touch with that peer group and moved for a while in a different circle. I found something I could do – research. I was never keen on exams and strict syllabuses. I did OK but attention to detail was not my forte. I can get bored easily. It turned out that I probably had the shortest career and the lowest life time earnings. {My estimate based on LinkedIn profiles.} I haven’t had a job since end of 2006 but I did work freelance a little and then as a private tutor. I have been retired for five years now. I am pretty sure that I could not fit back into the academic circles I once haunted. I could not hack all those people.

Some of my peers from London are big-ish cheeses in academia and industry. Me not. They have a different orbit to me, what is important to them, is not to me. I am not sure it ever was. We were talking about someone who has landed himself in controversy in that field. The taint of controversy in academia is difficult to shift. I have a joke that the collective noun for academics is a “gossip” of professors. I hope he is OK. It is another world.

Over the years I have met some weird people. One guy was fascinated by Aleister Crowley and belonged to a group of people so minded. I have read some of his correspondences and the I Ching. It is not all that. That group of people might be interested that I get Count Saint Germain in my dreams. He is an occult hero and was also a chemist of sorts. In the science circles he would be seen as fictional / made up.

We have two problems to solve. Because of my osteo arthritis the garden has become too large. This can be solved either by finding a small income stream to pay a gardener or to sell the house and buy another. The second problem is the cesspit which needs to be brought up to current standards. For the moment that is the boundary of problem. My working hypothesis is that part-time work for me is unlikely because a) my age, language skills and lack of employment and b) under French employment law creating posts is not straightforward. Realistically there is little besides editing of scientific English which I can do here. I could go back to doing online “A” level science tutoring for people in the UK. The pay rates in France are poor in comparison. We will have, hopefully, reliable fibre optic broadband next week.

It is strange for me to get dreams with famous politicians in. I have never met any of them nor am I ever likely too. They walk in very different circles to me.

Our daily routine has me empty the coffee grounds, feed the birds, turn off the electric fence to prevent nocturnal coypu eating our lotuses and iris shoots, collecting wood from the store. The coypu came during the afternoon yesterday when we were out so the fence is on 24/7 from now. We will play Hokey Cokey, in out, shake it all about with Bibi the indoor cat. Felix and Gandalf, the stray cats are already waiting for their 3pm feed. Tonight, we have lamb tagine, the lamb is marinading in the fridge. I will stick it in the oven for around 4:30 PM. Then as dusk starts to arrive we will close the shutters and light the log burner. The outside world will be outside. We are due gusts of wind to 90 Kmh this afternoon. We will have no face to face in person social engagement for the foreseeable future. We see the physiotherapist early January.

This is the circle that I walk in.

Dreams and Life Changing Decisions

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To be specific in what follows dreams refers to passive nocturnal dreaming, most often in the 4-7AM time frame. I am lucid in these dreams, knowing that I am dreaming, they are then either written by hand down in a journal on waking or typed into a word document.

The theory is that the reincarnating entity or dreamer selects a dreamed for each life in order to evolve, learn and thorough fulfilling a fate work at its destiny. The dreamed is the physical body or apparatus, its personality, weaknesses and abilities. In this context, I the dreamer, chose my parents, their circumstance and this lump of meat. Both my parents had a scientific leaning, it was fairly natural that I became a scientist of sorts. I was perhaps fated to study at a world top ten university, do my Ph.D. at a place with the world’s highest per capital Nobel prize density and later teach at another world top ten university in London, the capital of the UK. I am a trained chemical physicist.

In order to work with the theory above one has to literally follow, to the best of ability, what happens in dreams, even if that goes against “common sense”, plans and ambitions. The dreams may suggest things which you would prefer not to do and things which you do not like. This means that my orientation to life differs from the bulk of humanity. It may not sound too much but in practise it can be radical.  It would be very scary for someone prone to control freakery.

The dreamer tries to guide the dreamed towards the purpose of any given birth. The dreamer senses a destiny and needs to complete the fate for a chosen life. Fate being an integral over all karma.

People can play lip service to fate. They like to imagine that they are in control of their lives and that they direct life, that they can have life on their own terms.

At the moment I am fated to live outside society, physically adjunct. I got a new passport today. It has space for two emergency contacts. I was only able to fill one of them. I am not socially connected and that extent of disconnection is hard for most to comprehend or imagine. Few would believe how very little I use a mobile phone, despite the fact that I am reasonably computer literate.

I have made around six significant life changing decisions based on my interpretation of dream contents. Each one of these set off a sequence of events which were unexpected. I have had dreams which vastly altered my understanding of this current life. In making offerings after some of these dreams I have largely been ignored. A common theme in my dreams is that I will not be believed. I have rationalised this that I am fated not to be believed. It does not particularly bother me. That seems to be how it is.

There is “evidence” in my dreams of 7 or 8 previous incarnations, one of whom is a named historical figure. In most of these lives I have been associated with the “priesthood”. There is no way of proving this, I myself and inclined to believe this explanation. We have a pukka erstwhile ex-scientist believing something which would be for most of my ex-colleagues something of a stretch. It is a strange fate to find myself in this position and I do no know what if anything to do with it.

My interest in dreaming was rekindled by “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho.

For eight years I did a dreaming practice specifically to allow the dreamer, the Soul, to advise thence to take over the steering will of my mundane vehicle, the dreamed. I am a dreamer by predilection and in some arrangements, I am “in” the place of dreams the South. I lived as a child under the light of the Southern Cross. It is not too surprising that my dreaming is vivid and extensive.

Letting go of the steering wheel and handing it to my dreamer, the real me, was not easy.  However, retrospect suggests that the dreamer knew what it was doing because things unfolded. You need to have faith and courage to try this.

At the moment it looks as though there is not much complexity to my remaining fate. But one dream could alter all that dramatically…

It has happened before a sudden turn…

We shall see…

A New Phase?

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My previous passport was set to expire in March 2015 so I applied for a new one in September 2014. The following year I joined the big C club and was operated on 2nd July at full moon. The cancer was diagnosed pT3N0M0 with around 40 clear lymph nodes. They caught it just in time as at T3 it had broken through the colon wall. That passport kicked off a new phase of my life. I had colon cancer and bought myself T-shirts with a large semicolon on. I no longer had a full colon. I did not get any chemotherapy. I was now very expensive to insure in terms of life cover. Key man insurance was in the 50 grand sterling range. I did not want to continue tutoring high school science.

I have just applied for a new passport. The passport office have told me that it is printed and on its way. A passport is an identity document. My identity has been renewed. I hope this one is not a harbinger of doom. We have seen too many hospitals these last few years.

I have had a feeling these last few weeks that I am waiting for something and that something new is on its way.

Suddenly two things went our way. I caught the stray Tom and he is back now neutered looking at me through the window to see if there are any more bits of food. The vet thinks he may have feline FIV. And the volet company can fix our volets before Christmas!!

I am a bit sad in that my new passport will not be an EU one…

It is a full moon today…

Hmnn

Likelihood and Significance

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What is significant and important is very subjective. Things important to some are not to others. Many might imagine themselves important to society or the institution in which they work. The whole notion of importance is important in the minds of some. People might make an “important” discovery in science and get a Nobel prize.  People might make an important contribution to literature and get a Booker prize. “Important” things end up as questions on University Challenge. I can normally answer more than half a dozen questions per show. There is loads of stuff in the show which I have never heard of. Being an old git, much of what seems important to the younger generations has next to zero importance to me. My phone has never been used for a call. It is only used to keep in contact with the wife when we are apart. This is almost unbelievable for many though actually factually correct.

I speculate that I am only “important” to one human and three cats, two of which are stray. My current level of significance in the grand planetary scheme of things is very low, the prevailing likelihood is that this will not change.

Were I to leave the physical form it would not impinge on many people, there would be no obituary, no funeral. It would matter not a lot. I am not in the lives of others and they are not in mine.

We will have been here six years in January. It is the longest time in my life since 1969 in which I have not travelled by airplane. My first outing was a 32 hour flight from Heathrow via Acapulco to Syndney Australia. We have left Brittany only once in the six years to go to the Loire with a view to house hunting. One of the questions we occasionally get asked is “have you been back to England?” People are surprised when the answer in no, not at all. I can’t think why I would want to go back. There is nothing there for me. I may never see the UK again.

I was pondering on the nature of fate and mine in particular. The likelihood is that this life will simply fizzle out. I am pretty confident I won’t make it to the life expectancy of ~82.  A part of the fate was to shine early then stop suddenly. I left full time employment at the age of 42 and I haven’t had a job since. I did private tutoring for a number of years. I did pioneer a few things but since end of 2006 I have not contributed in practical terms, I certainly did not add to UK plc. I have not been of much use. Whatever potential I once had has perhaps been spent and there is not much left.

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This from Wikipedia

Social isolation is a state of complete or near-complete lack of contact between an individual and society. It differs from loneliness, which reflects temporary and involuntary lack of contact with other humans in the world. Social isolation can be an issue for individuals of any age, though symptoms may differ by age group.

Social isolation has similar characteristics in both temporary instances and for those with a historical lifelong isolation cycle. All types of social isolation can include staying home for lengthy periods of time, having no communication with family, acquaintances or friends, and/or wilfully avoiding any contact with other humans when those opportunities do arise.

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Research indicates that perceived social isolation (PSI) is a risk factor for and may contribute to “poorer overall cognitive performance and poorer executive functioning, faster cognitive decline, more negative and depressive cognition, heightened sensitivity to social threats, and a self-protective confirmatory bias in social cognition.” PSI also contributes to accelerating the ageing process: Wilson et al. (2007) reported that, after controlling for social network size and frequency of social activity, perceived social isolation is predictive of cognitive decline and risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

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Although I meet the connectivity criteria for social isolation, I do not feel particularly isolated and certainly not lonely. Social conditioning suggests that one ought to be social and one would miss contact when it ceases.

It is perhaps my fate to live this way. I have always been taken by the poems of Ryōkan Taigu a Sōtō Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. As a couple our lives are quite hermit-like. {The wife talks to friends using Skype.}

Whatever knowledge I have will go with me to the incinerator.  From time to time I wonder if people missed out learning from me, but that could simply be vanity messing with me.

I bought a new A4 folder today to put my dreams in because the other ones are full. I have made good progress towards carving some dice for the Mo practice. The parameters of life will be clarified by medical professionals next week. It is difficult to engage with the news as it is so repetitive and dire.  War, mass killing, sex scandal, flooding, people getting cancelled for not being PC, orange manbaby says blah blah, blah. The human world has lost its way.

According to numerology I am now well into my final pinnacle which is a one. This is supposed to have the positive aspects of pioneering, go-getting, the instigator, the strategist, the natural leader, the inventor, the cosmologist, mapping out the unknown, fluidity, tenacity, originality, individualism, self-respect, volatility.

Of these only two apply these days.

The negative aspects don’t really fit either apart from perhaps anti-establishment.

I took a good long look at leadership because someone once banged on at me about this {a lot}. I have concluded that I lack the socio-political skills and inclination to lead for anything other than a very short time. I just cannot be arsed with all the horse trading and back scratching. I am not cut out to lead people in normal activities.

I am confident that I have pioneered differing forms of meditation.

I have pretty much stopped reaching out to other people. I have no desire to inflict myself upon them. Everybody has their own agenda and evidence suggests that I am not thereupon.

I wonder if having a quiescent mind ends with a quiescent life fading in which one realises that one is not a big deal and in reality, one never was. I am no big cheese, no grand fromage. I was perhaps only mildly significant to others for a very short period.

I wonder how many people think themselves important, if only in their own lunch hour…

Hmnn….