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…