The grim cold heart of Winter now beats.  The Hermitage is like a polar explorer's cabin.  A haven from the bitter wind and ice outside.  The wombats love this weather.  The frolic on the frozen grass and mark their territory with steaming square turds.  In the high country, wombats have been known to slide down snow clad slopes only to runback to the top and do it again.  Just like stumpy little fat kids at Thredbo.  They play games and celebrate wombat life.  

When a Tasmanian Devil eats, it eats everything.  Bones are pulverised, fur and flesh are gulped down.  But for all the formidable jaw strength of this iconic scavenger, it cannot crush the skull of a wombat.  It can crush anything else, but not the noggan of the marsupial battle tank.  If it is pursued into its burrow by a fox, the wombat will use its huge arse to crush the attacker against the burrow wall. 

I would like to go on, but my computer has just announced that it is about to die.  Until next time, 

Ranger JMc   

We had a few incidents at camp serenity on Saturday night.  One of which is worth a special mention.  It was late and dark and cold.  The fire was ebbing away; its once glorious head of flame had faded to pale orange.   Sitting by the fire was a man.  A very drunk man with a chainsaw in his tent (can you guess where this is heading?).  At some stage this drunk man decided that it would be wise to start his chainsaw and cut some wood for warmth.  Shortly thereafter an ambulance carted him away.  They never found his finger (but the ants did).  There is still blood on the walls of the toilets where he waited and wailed and wished he was wiser.  Cest la vie! 

After 10 glorious years, I have decided to decommision my gloriously cunning website.  Thus, all future access to this blog will be via the direct url "ratcunning.blogdrive.com".  The blog lives on, the website dies.  For those of you not familiar with my website: too late now! $

Spent all day yesterday in the high country looking for corroboree frogs in bogs.  The weather was perfect for the task:  20 degrees, no wind and a cloudless azure sky.  There were about a dozen of us, rangers & scientists on a quest.  We spread ourselves out to form a search line spanning the bog.  It has been a wet summer and the bog was pretty bloody boggy. 

Slowly we began moving forward, the line edging unevenly across the spongey terrain.  Bog flora is something to behold: it's a rich and diverse assemblage of intertwined and interdependent thingos.  Tiny wild flowers, mosses, sedges and hardy shrubs, all tightly bound and thriving in their wee ecological niche.  Many of them in full flower and searching out the suns warm rays. The were also plenty of snakes, aerial ants, alpine crays, birds, grasshoppers and lizards.

As we walked, we scanned the bog for likely frog ponds.  Upon encountering likely sites, we'd stop, cup our hands and shout "hey frog!".  On hearing soemone make this call, the entire line would freeze and listen for a couple of seconds.  The theory behind this rather silly method, is that sharp loud noises cause frogs to make an alarm croak.  The corroboree frog has a distincive sound and we strained our ears each time to pick it up amid the chirrupping cicadas, the song birds and other ambient bog noise.  This survey is done annually and no corroboree frogs had been recorded at this site since the fires of 2003 fried the bog.  Yesterday we recorded 5 definites and a possible.  A spectacular outcome.  The chief biologist was chuffed.

We finished up early in the afternoon just as the snow gums fell into shade and the first hint of mountain chill laced the air.  It was a great day and a fine wildlife experience.  I think I'll do it again next year.

I dreamt one night of sky impossible skies,
And I dreamt I beheld them with you;
I dreamt that the stars were impossibly bright
And the days impossibly blue.

I had great plans for this poem, but they are lost.  'Tis now a verse without title or reason.  A poem to lie hereafter in the digital wasteland.  The swift demise of H & B has sapped my reserves of chaos.  Lines fragment, words drift, threads fray.  For the moment, the poems are all veiled in shadow...... and are lost.

Despite my cramped quarters, I have taken on two lodgers:  Henry and Banjo.  They are very quiet and dont drink any of my beer.  Of course they're both basil plants so one would expect them to live sedate and sober lives.  I have recently mastered the arcane and delicous art of the Greek salad.  I expect Henry and Banjo to provide ongoing support to this end.  Tonight I am planning to bake something.  Quite obviously I'm well advanced on the road to madness.  JMc - Lifetime president: 'International league of Hermits'.  Enough guff for now.