The work continues....

We carried on with the daily drudge of going to farms and killing everything.

It sounds like a cliche, but when you'd finished killing everything, there was an eerie silence on the farms; even the birds stopped singing.

Farms aren't quiet places.  Animals always make noise of some sort, often just contented sounds, but always some noise.  Once we'd killed everything, all you wanted to do was get washed down and away to the next.

We worked long hours, and didn't sleep much.  Some days we would start at 5 or 6 in the morning, and not get back to the hotel until 10 or 11 at night.

One night, I'd just sat down for my warmed up dinner at about 10pm when the phone rang.  It was Nigel;

"We've got an urgent job to do.  It's a new infected premises, and they want us to make a start on it straight away"

"You're joking."

"No.  I'll ring the drovers, you get hold of Tony.  I'll meet you there."

I continued to eat while I phoned Tony and arranged to pick him up.

By this stage of the crisis, we'd started to stockpile stores.  In the van I had plenty of drugs, syringes, needles and ammunition.  I'd also stopped handing in guns for service and Tony and I serviced them ourselves.  I had four guns on board, one for Tony, one for me, and a spare each.

We drove off to the new IP.  On arrival, we got out of the van and started to get ready.  The now familiar TV crew and newspaper journalists were waiting for us and making offers for our 'story'.  They got the usual response from me ("I'm busy, piss off.") and the usual from Tony ("How much?").  It always amazed us that the media seemed to know where the infected premises were before we did.  Exeter leaked like a sieve.

Nigel was already on farm, and we sent the two drovers on to sort out the plan while Tony and I loaded the kit into our now familiar yellow builders buckets.

We set off up the lane, and about halfway up a figure came out of the dark to stop us.

"Is it true?" the man asked

"Is what true?" I replied

"Have they got 'it' next door?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

"So you'll be killing all my stock as well?" he asked

"Not tonight.  We'll be back to sort it out tommorow."

The man took on a concerned look.

"The thing is, we've got a pig.  It's only a pet, but I understand that they are the worst thing going for foot and mouth.  If it's going to make things worse around here, then I'll shoot it myself tonight"

"What sort of pig is it?"

"It's a kune kune" he said.

"Look, " I said, "a few hours aren't going to make much difference.  We are coming back first thing in the morning, so providing it's not showing any signs of disease, we'll deal with it then.  You'll need to have it valued; do you have a favoured valuer?"

"Yes, we use 'Bucks' for everything."

"OK, leave it with me.  We'll bring a valuer with us in the morning."

The valuers were staying with us in the hotel, and I had their numbers in my phone.  I rang them as we walked away and arranged for them to come out at 6am.

In some ways, we shouldn't have left the pig that night.  I didn't have the right gun to shoot it (a pig like that needs a 'free bullet'), and I didn't want the farmer doing a botch job himself.  I'd pick up the correct gun in the morning.

Tony and I walked into the farm and got an update from the drovers.  There was a large dairy herd, and some followers.  Some dairy cows were showing symptoms, so they were the priority.

We ran the cows through the parlour for their sedation, and they were then put into an empty silage clamp.  Tony started work almost straight away, and it wasn't long before I joined him.

We got all the cattle killed that night, and arranged to meet on farm at 6am to kill the couple of hundred sheep and start work on the contiguous farm next door.

At 2.30am, I fell into bed for a couple of hours sleep before the next marathon day.