Into the wild!

After all these FB reactions to my latest post (the possum one), and a little bit of time on my hands, I feel like I need to write the whole story down.

In the search for a paid job ASAP, a great opportunity came up to help a friend de-jungle the garden around his house set in the middle of nowhere, and look after his house while he is gone for work a few days per week. Flexibility and a perfect get-away from the tourist crowds provided, I didn't hesitate for a moment! I stocked up on food and headed out to NOWHERE (roughly between Te Anau and Invercargill) on Sunday. With plenty of work to do around the house, and equipped with work clothes (including the famous 'gumboots' ) and a few explanations, I immediately plunged into ripping the greenery apart - don't worry, all as expected! The plants here had probably not seen a garden tool for at least 3 years, and though the house was still clearly visible, it was getting into a danger zone of being overgrown by ivy...
My friend was happily motivated again and drawn into this action to gain back control over the garden

flora, and after just a few hours of work, he was impressed to already see progress. "Call me Miss Destruction!" I smiled, following his instructions that everything has to be at least trimmed, if not cut down or completely removed. My favorite was his very pragmatic approach about the roses: "Cut them down, they are a pest to take care of!"

Somewhere in the tool storage, I came across a cage trap, which we set up in the garden hoping to catch a possum. A (o)possum, my dear friends from overseas, is a wild nocturnal animal, about the size of a large cat, which had originally been brought in from Australia for fur-trade. Those little fellows are quite cute to look at. Despite their claws and sharp teeth, they could also make a pet for their curiosity and playfulness. However, being short of natural predators here in NZ, and their hunger to eat just about anything, the possum's number exploded drastically within only several years, along with a drastic and traumatic decrease of native NZ birds, to the point where many birds were and still are close to extinction. (to be perfectly fair, not all credit goes to the possum, but much of it does).
The price of fur went down over the years, so only a few people set

out to hunt the bugger commercially any more. These days, possums are also referred to as "NZ's little speed bumps", and it is indeed an act of well-doing to run over them with your car at night.

The next morning, unfortunately, it was only a bird that had tried to steal the apple in the trap.
Despite my friend leaving early the next day to go to work, we kept the trap outside. We had gone hunting for rabbits that afternoon, to make sure that the old country side cat that lives on the premises would have something to nibble on (and this cat has certainly be spoiled in its eating habits!). On that occasion I learned how to load a rifle.

I want to make sure you understand that I have enormous respect for weapons, especially for loaded ones, and even more so if they are somewhere near me! I didn't shoot at the rabbit that afternoon.

However, the next morning my friend was gone, and as I woke up, my first thought was: "please, let there be NO possum in the trap!". Shortly forgot about it, until I glanced out of the kitchen window, and saw a bundle of fur and two scared eyes caught in the cage. 'Shit' I

thought, and shortly considered releasing it, but that wouldn't do any good for the birds, either!
So I kept calm, finished my breakfast, and just thought "Let's get it over with!". Carefully loaded the rifle, pointed through the cage, and pulled the trigger. All this time, I was very collected, but when, even after two shots, the possum winded itself up as in a last fight with death, I felt really awful. I pulled myself quickly together again, and sent it off into eternal rest with a third shot. It is really quite frightening how easy it is to end another life, and believe me, it was all ration arguing about the possum's harmfulness to native wildlife that made me do it!

I was too nervous and afraid that there was still life in the cage (even though it looked as dead as it could be), so I started plucking fur off through the cage. And just as a good Native American would have done, I talked to the corpse, and explained why I had one what I had done.
Then I turned away and worked for a few hours before I had the courage to lift up the cage and bury the remains between the large pine trees. Now imagine how grueling long it took me to get the stiff body with the big claws hooked to the metal out of the cage...
May the possum rest in peace!!