Dream of the Four Pronged nagal – 30-04-2025

Here is this morning’s dream.

I am with Charlie whom I know to be an extrovert highly talkative nagal’s courier. We are in a courtyard with white stone walls some draped in rude pink bougainvillea. We are sat at a two seater small white bistro style table in the sun. He is talking animatedly and says that there are some people he would like me to meet. We are in a leafy rich suburb of Pretoria South Africa. He says again that are some people he would like me to meet, now.

The first is just around the corner. He leads me off to a small shopping / administrative area. There is a 1960s style polygon shaped building with a large, covered porch and outdoor seating. It is a community library and an outreach of the university. We enter and there are all sorts of posters in the vestibule advertising events. Behind the librarian’s desk is a medium height medium build white woman. She has an immaculate grey straight haired bob and is dressed in a well pressed blouse and trousers. There are small black butterflies as a motif on her white blouse. Around her neck on a lanyard are spectacles. Charlie introduces me and she speaks in a Germanic Dutch English accent. It is different from Afrikaans and highly educated. She says that she likes the East. I already know this, she is an Easterly Stalker who works at the university library most of the time. In her spare time, she is highly athletic and a free climber. She is lithe.

Charlie then leads me off South into a township near Cape Town. We go to a government run drop in centre / nursery. It is next to a pop-up health centre for adults with HIV. We go into the centre and I can immediately hear the booming tones of a large woman, who is telling someone off in a well humoured manner. She is laughing. As we approach, I can see a large buxom and overweight black woman with corn-row dreadlocks. She has a gold ring piercing in her left nostril and left ear. She is about six feet tall and, in all respects, larger than life. Around her are numerous toddlers and small children. It is chaotic yet somehow together. She hugs Charlie fiercely and squashes him to her bosom. When she sees me, she suddenly becomes coy and suspicious. She inspects me and breaks into a radiant ear to ear grin. There is no need for a hug because we can feel each other’s hearts. She is a Southerly Stalker.

Charlie then takes me to Western Cape to an isolated penitentiary inland from the coast. It is surrounded by razor wire and heavily guarded. We pull up to the guard house in our car. He stays in the car as only I am allowed in. The guards have been expecting me. They open the gate and let me in. I walk in unaccompanied. There are no more guards. I open the first gate and then a door. Inside in a dark room of considerable size there is an electric fence surrounding an enclosure. On it are danger high-voltage signs. I can see a man inside the enclosure. He is wearing a wide brimmed hat and a long dark brown bushwhacker’s coat. I can pass through the electric fence without any problems, with ease. I know that it does not constrain him either. We are at home in the darkness of the room. We stand brooding together in the darkness. He is a Man Behind the Scenes and I know him to be seventh ray. I can see his eyes but not his face in the darkness. We know each other very well, across lifetimes.

The dream ends.

Popa Coypu and the Five Strand Fence

Two days ago we upgraded the electric fence to a cable with six cores and therefore lower resistance, higher energy shock. We also made it a single wire five strand fence with a smaller gap between strands. All the holes in the other fence are blocked and will be changed from temporary to fixed in due course.

The night before last we had a younger coypu get shocked and run. The witness sticks by the pond were untouched suggesting no ingress.

Last night popa-coypu came and decided not to try to cross the fence…

Fingers crossed, we have deterrence again.

Coypu and the Lotus Wars

It is very important that the lotus grows out of the mud, the mire, and strecthes its radiant head above water to soak in the solar bounty.

Here is the Heron recorded after dawn. In the pond you can see the proto-lotuses starting to form. They are to the top middle of the video.

Turn the sound up to hear the birdsong….

We finished reinforcing the wire fence yesterday. But, here is Moma Coypu coming from the left up from the river. She disturbs the witness sticks…

She is joined by junior coypu, who heads off in the direction of the lotuses for supper…

After dining junior comes back to Moma and she grooms the little bastard.

About and hour or so before dawn Moma heads back in the general direction of the river.

If you listen carefully you can hear an owl.

Somehow they are getting though the electric fence. I’ll put the camera out to observe and will probbaly make a five strander. The toad migration has started and unfortunatley we electrocuted a female toad the other night. I need to make sure there is good clearence at the bottom…

Gandalf Likes Chicken Jalfrezi…

As part of the morning routine, I take any waste and the coffee grounds out to the composters. I usually leave the pot and the cafetiere there and go to check the marker / witness sticks around the pond. We need to get the coypu situation sorted before the lotuses start.

Yesterday I had some leftover chicken jalfrezi in a saucepan. The recipe contains turmeric, paprika and tomatoes. I left the saucepan on top of the composter and did my rounds. Now Gandalf is the young female stray cat. She is both grey and white and hence her name. Gandalf the grey battled the Balrog underground and as consequence was reborn as Gandalf the white. Her white fur is very white.

When I got back from my rounds, she was there on top of the composter with her head in the saucepan licking the jalfrezi sauce. She picked up some smears of yellow-orange sauce on her face. There is still some residual colour this morning. Turmeric can be difficult to shift. She seemed to like the jalfrezi. What about vindaloo? That remains to be seen.

As a result, I have had to change my routine and not leave pots on the composter.

This morning’s round reveals that the dastardly coypu twins have found / made a new hole in the fence. The witness sticks near that hole have been moved. The ones near the electric fence remain relatively untouched.

I have 25m of fencing with 2mm thick wire arriving later this week. This afternoon there is no rain and we are predicted the dizzy heights of 7 °C. So, I shall rewire the electric fence to be a four strand fence with 4-5 cm gaps between strands. I’ll popover into the swamp and the DMZ in the neighbouring wild and strim their side of the fence.

That means when the new fencing arrives, I am good to go…

The Coypu Saga Continued…

I extended a single strand electric fence over the most recently chewed hole and plugged in the HV.

I went out to inspect this morning…





The wire had been moved upwards and the support posts twisted consistent with an ingress attempt. The witness sticks around the pond had been moved so I assumed success.


Around 9pm CET time there is a movement to the left consistent with a shocked Coypu running off.


Around 4AM the camera is triggered but no Coypu recorded. You can see the wire twisted up. The blighter came back. It is probably hungry as the river is in flood so no access to bank and river bed food.


Just before dawn getting a hurry up shock on the way out.


It looks as though he is learning to take the risk for the reward.

I guess a shock to the nose is worse than to the back.

I will put two strands across the hole later today.

Coypu – Nutria – A Global Problem?

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…

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.

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….

Preparing for the Annual Toad Migration

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.

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.

The family of Coypu coming up from the river…

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?