Stick Insect and Three Day Sickness

Yesterday I found a stick insect in the work shed.  He was sitting on an old rag so I thought I would pick him up and place him on the tree fern.  Big Mistake!  They have nippers…..big nippers…that latched onto my finger with a vengeance!  For goodness sake, I was only trying to help the fellow!  I did manage to get him onto the tree fern with the aid of a rag and then decided to take a photo of those nippers.  Here is the result…

On a different note, we have had 186mm of rain in the past three days  (over 7 inches) and it is inevitable with that much rain that we will have cattle go down with three-day sickness.  It is usually not life threatening if you just leave the animal alone to recover.  

This morning I had to move cattle from one paddock to another and one of the calves was lying down away from the mob.  I knew as soon as he tried to get up that he had three-day.  They become very stiff in the joints and obviously find it difficult to move.  I decided to leave the calf behind but it had other ideas.  It is sad to watch him.  He wants to be with the other cattle (and mum) and it is only a few hundred metres to the next paddock but so far he has only moved a quarter of the way and he has a big hill to ascend.  I'm just leaving him alone. Mum will eventually come back to look for him and hopefully she will encourage him the rest of the way.

I'm sure he's thinking "Oh boy.  How am I going to get up that hill"

"May as well make a start"