Ginger Sow

 I've just installed the trail camera at a spot on the track where I've seen the cutest feral pig three times over the last week. She is a black pig with a ginger stripe going right around her middle and a row of suckling teats on her underside.

At about the same time I saw her, Jimmy turned up at my house. He's a handsome young man with a disorganised gait.  'Hi Sarah,' Jimmy threw out his hand. 'Look, my car ran out of petrol halfway along the track. Could you give me a lift back there? I have some fuel in the shed.'

The last time I saw Jimmy, he sought my help after he'd bogged his Dad's tractor out in the middle of the inlet. Yes, you read that right. Bogged his Dad's tractor in the middle of the inlet. 'What were you doing?' I asked him back then. 'I was setting nets but then the tractor fell in a swan hole.' 'Setting net from a fucking tractor? Have you not heard of a boat?' I decided to give it a red hot hot go anyway to break the monotony. Jimmy and I got down to the shore, after sourcing several hundred metres of snap straps and rope. The tractor sat out in the inlet like a kinda sad, defeated island.

The operation was an abject failure with me skidding all over the beach on the end of a tow rope, threatening to tear the chassis out of my car at sunset. The next day a few more 4WDs turned up and towed the tractor out. Jimmy was instructed by his family to never use the tractor again.

So when Jimmy turned up the other day, I was grateful for this lesser chassis-destroying request. We drove up the track to deliver petrol to his car. At the point where the track turns into white, slidey clay during rain, I said, 'I've seen a pig around this spot, every other day for the last week.'

Jimmy nodded and said, 'Yeah, last night as I was walking in, I smelt something, like an animal was living around here.' When we got to his car, standing in the middle of the road, he hauled his fuel cans off the back of my ute and got busy.

As I drove home behind Jimmy, I kept thinking of this mother pig, of where she had stashed her piglets, and also of Jimmy's midnight walk along the track. So today, I put a camera trap in the spot where the track get slidey and made of white clay. I'd love to see what goes on there at night.