mroboz wrote: > Kent's comments make sense at least for some animals. eg. I had > friends who always had a few vegies and a couple of fruit trees > outside their most outer fence. They let the bears have the fruit > from those 2 fruit trees as they never ate the ones inside the > property. They didn't have any deer fences but must have left the > veggies for the deer, who never bothered the veggies inside. Michael > This is a story about a sheep farmer who purchased a property in the Southern Tablelands of NSW. The previous owner was BD oriented, had been running sheep there for at least 15 years. Three months after the new owner moved in, he phoned the other man to complain about the kangaroos which were eating him out of house and home. Wall to wall, he said they were, why hadn't Jake (not his real name) mentioned them to him at the time of the sale.
Well, Jake answered that he'd never had any trouble with 'roos; they kept to their paddock and left all his alone. There was a distinct pause at the other end of the line before the new owner asked, cautiously, what he was talking about. That had been their agreement many years before, replied Jake, and both they and he had stuck to it. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Jake visited his old farm and escorted its owner to a paddock adjacent to a belt of trees well away from the homestead, in a corner of which a small 'mob' of 'roos was grazing. They all looked up as he called "May we come in?" from the gate but didn't bound away. This is unusual behaviour for these animals which generally take off at the slightest sound. He opened the gate and both men walked through and to the middle of the paddock, watched by the 'roos. When he figured they were close enough, Jake said out loud "This is M. He is the new owner of this place. He wants to have the same agreement with you that I did. This will be your paddock as it always was. All he wants is for you to leave the other paddocks for his sheep. Is that all right?" Apparently it is - M has not had any kangaroo problem since - they stay in their paddock and he and his sheep stay in his. roger
