Behaving like a Child acting as Adult

Now I know that I sometimes, for the sake of the wildlife, get myself into some silly situations. Just such an incident occurred a few weeks ago when I climbed into a tree to ensure that my sent was above the wildlife I was trying to see. When I got up there was enough light to see what I was doing. I stayed there until well after dark, and while I did get to see the Deer, they were to far away to film. Trees in the way, to much vegetation, but my field craft had been accurate in predicting the general location. So once I knew the deer were clear of the area, I decided to climb down.

This was not as easy as it sounds. I lowered my camera, and as I tried to get down myself, my gaiters (used to stop the midges feeding on me) got caught up. So I tried to get back up, not so easy in the dark, and I ended up with my left foot on the ground but my right foot rather elevated. Well lets put it this way I suffered a groin injury.

In the past I had to have a hernia operation, and while at times is has caused some discomfort all had been fine. However, I though I may have undone that by my antics. Therefore yesterday I went to see my GP. I explained what I had done, and his first question was and how old are you?
Well I do childish things, but its my excitement at seeing wildlife that brings out the juvenile in me. At least I don't need to have another operation but isn't it always the way as soon as the warranty runs out that's when things go wrong, and mine expired when I reached middle age.
So today I went to see someone who I had met in one of the local pubs some time ago. One of the aspects of anything to do with wildlife is just how enthused people get regarding natural history. It my just be the Red Kites, or that people love seeing the birds in their gardens but the British love their wildlife.

Anyway, this couple that I fell into conversation with told me that just as the pub we were in, they to ran a community library. And that most of the books had been donated. However, they had a significant number that were natural history titles that no one seemed to want to borrow, so did I want them. Now while books on natural history interest me, there are some that are not really that good. But I did agree that I would take a look at them. That's what I did today.
Well I was expecting there to be a few but there were nearly a thousand books there. By no means were they all Natural History books, but every topic under the sun. They were thinking of selling off these books at fifty pence each. So I suggested that they check what they were actually worth first. So using the internet we went through them, and many were worth far more than fifty pence.

Therefore I hoping I offered the suggestion that they sold them on line. This would provide greater income and enable them to buy more of the books they knew people wanted to read and borrow. I was enlisted to take pictures of them and together we worked out a fair price for them. It was clear that they had been good well looked after books.

Then came the box of the Natural History titles. These had not come from some mere dabbler, many of these books were incredible reference works. What shocked me was they were saying I could have them. I refused pointing out how valuable they were. This caused them some confusion as they had already had a book dealer look at them and he had offered twenty five pounds ($40) to take them off their hands. I picked out three and showed that they were mint first editions and was able to show that these three alone were selling on the internet for just under one thousand pounds.

Going through the rest there was a combined value of well over a thousand pounds. All in all they could raise about Four thousand pounds for their community library. While they had realised that some of the books could have been worth something, no one had been able to help them. In fact it seemed that all the help they had had previously was from people trying to help themselves.

I did not come away empty handed though, as one of the books was a mimeograph (a shorter cheaper students edition) of the New Naturalist Badger a book that I have long looked for but, out of range of my pocket. And I paid twenty pounds for it.

I also have my eye on another book but I will have to save up my pennies for that one.
Now I can see how I am doing it all wrong and misunderstanding what I am seeing. Anyway to celebrate getting this book, here's a picture of one of my sows taken six weeks ago.