No Guts, No Glory

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The small mackerel gulls are enjoying the rafts of weir stakes and poles floating in the cove. There are hundreds of them and every now and then, for no reason I can discover, they all take off and fly around in seemingly aimless circles. It’s impressive. Confusing but impressive.

Construction on this new weir has begun. The stakes from an older installation were sawed off and the pile-driver is here to pound new ones. Progress has been very slow though.

There didn’t seem to be much urgency because the fish really haven’t been behaving this year. The good news is that fishermen are finally starting to get some herring – not a lot, but any amount at this point is important. Bills need to be paid. 🙂

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I’m glad that some fish are finally being harvested and not just because they’re selling for $1,000/ton. Let’s just say tempers are getting short, arguments are getting louder, and hair triggers are set off daily. Being able to focus on the fish, and not the lack of them, should smooth the waters (pun intended).

It’s obvious that fishing is a high risk endeavour – and not just because of the dangers involved. It requires a huge leap of faith to invest large amounts of capital into weirs, and twine, and licenses. Working hard is necessary to get some return on the investment but means nothing if the fish don’t actually show up.

I recently undertook a project which I found terrifying. Oh it wasn’t at the level of mortgaging my future in the hopes some 6 inch fish was going to cooperate and let me catch it. Still, as mundane as it was, it took a surprising amount of courage.

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I have a pillow top mattress which is almost 4 years old now. Some of them will last you for 10 years – mine apparently had a 3 year life-span. The dips in them can be fixed temporarily with a flat pillow placed underneath. I had done that and it worked for a while – then I found myself waking up with extreme pain in my back and hips. I had to fix the problem.

Getting another mattress was one option. After doing a lot of research I found a less expensive alternative and I spent days debating with myself until I finally took on the project – pain was the ultimate motivator.

I stripped the bed and then took off the top of the mattress (the pillow). Then I removed the layers of foam until I reached a surface with no dip in it. I then used a 4″ foam topper I have for the sofa bed to replace all the stuff I’d removed. A deep mattress cover now holds the topper to the mattress springs.

It worked – although I have to tell you making that first incision to remove the “pillow” was scary as heck. Any future problems and I’ll just replace the topper. In the meantime I, once again, have a comfortable and pain-free sleep. 🙂

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Sometimes courage is just idiocy on steroids. I witnessed that phenomenon this morning in a friend’s back yard. I was sitting in the car talking to her as she drank her coffee on the porch and noticed her cat acting oddly. He was pouncing on something in the grass, running a few steps, backing up, then pouncing again.

The action moved closer to me and eventually I could see he was having an argument with a mouse.

Now, it could be my lack of experience with these things “in the wild”, but I expect a mouse to run away from threats. This one was attacking the cat, with bared teeth, and jumping to try and reach vulnerable parts of the cat’s body.

I don’t know if the mouse had just reach the point where it refused to be a victim anymore, or if it had found some weird drugs in the garbage, but it was definitely the aggressor. The cat still won the fight. Somewhere, in mousy heaven, that little beast is probably getting congratulations for standing up for itself. In my mind some glory just isn’t worth it. 🙂

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