I have been battling in a war against cotton bush. I am fine with the bushes growing in loose soil but the larger ones growing in clay on the small dam wall are more than a match for me. Toby Dog and I set off on the Kubota at 7am this morning to continue the thankless task. The major problem is that the little dam is the hub of an Ant Town of meat ants. Vicious unrelenting ants in plague proportions. They have built highways all over the back 25 acres.

It would be fascinating to view the network from a drone. The vexing fact is that the mature cotton bush close to shedding seeds are growing very close to the black streams of ants scurrying on their way to work and back. I do dress well for my task. I have on a onesie with loose balloon pantaloons, cropped in by elastic chaps. This affords me some breathing space before I must engage in a gloved ant eradication dance to push the ants down from my chest as they march to the head of the beast standing on one of the highways. I am usually successful but Toby has no such protection so in disgust he ran home and left me to be devoured alive.

After four hours I retired injured. I got stuck on a barbed-wire fence. It was a touch and go delicate situation. Firstly the barbs shredded my onesie. The battalion of tireless ants which had dogged me saw their chance and surged in via the holes. I was caught in a delicate region so was being careful to not give myself a female circumcision. The ants eventually made me not care about the region which had once given me such delights and I threw caution to the wind and fell over the fence, rolled and brushed ants away. Remember that antz pantz ( sic’em Rex ) advertisement? Everyone thought it was cheeky and too sexual for television. I am here to tell you such a situation is nothing like one would imagine. It is perhaps closer to living in Hell on earth.

The eradication of the cotton bush is obviously a two-person job and I cringe to think that I may have been discovered in a few days’ time, a skeleton straddling a barbed-wire fence caught up in its wires. The only benefit is that I would have been a thin corpse!