UFOs

Unidentified Farm Objects

A farm has almost unlimited possibilities for unearthing unrecognisable stuff. Bits of old farm implements tossed in a hedge, ancient medicine bottles left by a gateway and never retrieved, skulls and bones from every conceivable native creature, disturbed nests, buried rubbish and buried treasure. Most things, though, do ultimately reveal themselves and their purpose.

Because there are killers on the land, ranging from magpies and sparrowhawks eager for a bit of tasty young blue tit, to foxes devouring everything from rabbits, pheasants and pigeons to lambs struck down with some ailment, you get used to finding a spare ear, a gall bladder or a section of a rat’s head. Just yesterday we had our regular visit from HighGround and one of the dogs dropped half a mouse as a welcome gift at our feet. There was another, very wet, dead but whole mouse on his bed which I found a couple of hours later, buzzing with eager flies. So I’m used to finding things both firm and squishy, animal, vegetable and mineral, in places where they have been put or left by bird or mammal or machine.

But just occasionally there will be a true UFO. Nothing to do with creatures from outer space and everything to do with a lack of knowledge. Someone, somewhere, with the appropriate information and experience would not be fazed, but I’m not always in that category.

Yesterday evening I spotted something the size and shape of a small severed thumb, black, and covered in grass seed and general detritus. It was regular in shape with smooth, rounded ends, like one of t hose well worn pebbles at the sea side. It was on the track on the way out of the farm and I made a mental note not to tread on this unknown object. I hopped in the car, completed a number of chores in the next village, and came home. And as I entered the house I realised there as something attached to the side of my sandal. At first I thought it was just a piece of mud, definitely not dog shit. And there was no smell which was a definite plus point. So being the farmer that I am and with a pretty high threshold for things yucky, I tried to pry it off my shoe with my fingers. That was when I realised that it was the thumb-like object I’d spotted earlier… yep, I had trodden in it after all. And to my horror, it was soft and squishy, like a large fruit jelly, with some sort of skin around it, because although soft, it did not break or burst in my hand. Just the thought makes me writhe, 24 hours later. And most bizarrely of all, it left a thick slick of clear gluey something on my sandal, so sticky that I had to scrape it off with a penknife because rubbing it with a piece of kitchen roll made no impact. Sticky like a manufactured clear glue, the Bostik of my childhood, and not the mildly sticky adhesion of some oozy plant sap.

I have absolutely no idea what it was. The spleen of a rabbit, the plaything of a hobbit, a well-sucked liquorice sweet dropped out of a military helicopter on night exercises. Who knows? And no, I didn’t take a photograph before I put it resolutely in the bin. Not that it would have helped, and I definitely wasn’t going to do a biopsy and risk having the contents spill its secrets. Urk. No thank you.