Ben's Blog

January 2020

Feral deers are taking over the country, breeding like rabbits – giant rabbits – breeding like Irish Catholics on Horny Goat Weed, decimating the shrubbery, fouling the water-ways and squashing the frogs.

It is high time something was done about it. Obviously we should be hunting the deer, and eating them. Apparently they taste quite good. Why on earth do we go to such lengths to clear the bush and replace it with green grass, just so we can grow beefs and sheeps, when there are equally nutritious and delicious meats running around in the forest: deer, pig, donkey, goat, camel, horse, cat, kangaroo ( although they hop rather than run) Yet we turn up our noses at these tasty sources of protein. We could all go out on the week-end and hunt these beasts and commune with nature at the same time. It would distract the kids from x-box at least, and get us all off our mobile phones for a while. If we managed to fell a deer we could put it on a spit and have a forest feast, singing songs and telling tales of daring-do. This would help us overcome the alienation and isolation brought on by modern society.

When the pale skinned tribes from the north first set foot on this island, they went to an awful lot of trouble to convince the locals to abandon their peripatetic ways and stay put. They said, “it will enhance your employment prospects if you don’t ‘go walkabout’ all the time”.

Yet lo and behold, it turns out the sedentary life-style is not the ideal way of life at all. It tends to make one fat and listless. Now we must spend an inordinate amount of time convincing folks to get off their bums and go outside and do a bit a of good old-fashioned hunting-and-gathering in the woods occasionally.

It would be ironic if it wasn’t so tragic.

_{Ben Laycock}