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I seem to have inherited her traplines during her absence – the shady winter valleys of Pōhatu/ Flea Bay.

This is where once a week I mumble and grumble to myself, as I try to navigate our tracks... which are now a series of boggy death traps, one wrong step and your boots are sucked into the clay sludge right up to your ankles. Yay... Not.

You can become a bit disheartened trapping in the middle of winter, long wet grass, sodden squelchy boots, slimy slidy tracks and thick sea fog looming low in the bay, it all makes me think this would be the perfect setting for a horror movie. Black sheep 2?...

But the worst part of winter trapping - is many of the animals you are trying to take out are hibernating. So, most of the traps, which you have hiked 200 metres up a steep slippery hill covered in spikey eye gouging Kanuka scrub for... are empty.

But trapping must continue! Out with the old mouldy bait, in with the new. And Christchurch City Council are very nicely co-funding our trapping wages this season, so we really don’t want to let them down.

Luckily for me Pest Free Banks Peninsula set up a workshop in Robinsons Bay, right next door to my house – so, I went along. It was so nice to catch up with neighbours and see the enthusiasm they had for predator control. I’ve been trapping on and off in Pōhatu now for 16 years, I figured there’s not so much more I can learn from a workshop. And in truth I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know (thanks to my cousin Jess, who usually keeps our team up to date on anything predator control related), but what I did take away - was I got all inspired again. The passion of the Pest Free team, the keenness of my neighbours to set up a trapline in Robinsons bay. I left the workshop as enthused as they were.

My next trapping run landed on a rare magical winters’ day. The sun was out! it was actually warm enough to just wear a t-shirt and fantails fluttered around me, chatting away, almost landing on my shoulder - I was in a Disney movie. I still had to navigate the squishy bogs though.

This trapping run, after the workshop - I wanted to spice things up a little. Literally.

I packed with me a container full of flour and cinnamon powder and I blazed our traps. The idea is to get the predators interested, get them curious. I imagine a hedgehog going “what the heck is going on here?” and checking out the white cinnamon dusted trap.

Some traps I just unset – blazed them with flour and sprinkled bits of meat and cat biscuits outside. So, they can check out a trap without it going off and making them trap shy. Next week I’ll reset them.

I had caught a few rats and a couple of Hedgehogs on my run - pretty good for winter. Better than last week. Ridgeline is our hedgehog hotspot and yes that’s where I caught them this time.

I’m always delighted to find bloated maggot filled Hedgehogs and flattened rats in our traps up there, for you see... Ridgeline is a prime real estate for our Banks peninsula tree weta. Shireen (my Aunty) had made a series of weta hotels up there, way back in the day. I like to check them out now and again. And lately it’s been a Gecko party! Baby common geckos, big Mama geckos and Giant papa geckos each have a room in the hotel. Along with some beetle friends.

From the Pest Free workshop, they mentioned one hedgehog was found with a total 41 weta remains in its stomach after just one night. I usually feel sorry for hedgehogs, most likely because they are cute and snuffly... but not today! Those spiky vacuum cleaners will not eat our wetas and geckos. Not on my watch! (Imagine me dressed as Rambo/Terminator against a hedgehog man... in nija fighting stance).

I finish off the last of our traps for the day. As I’m walking the line, I end up following a penguin poop trail, it’s my default mode – I go on auto pilot from 2 years of penguin surveys.

I find this penguin beginning a nest in a small cave – and I think, gosh it’s so exposed to predators. And no matter how defeated you feel about trapping, and your catches are low in winter, and you almost feel like it’s pointless trudging around in the mud, battling through wet scrub, and knowing that only one out of the hundred predators that visits your trap actually goes in... you see this exposed Kororā just chilling. And you know from the surveys around the peninsula, what a rare site this is... and you know that it’s all worth it.

So, I get home after a hard day trapping, wet boots, soggy socks. And guess what I find at our front door... A stoat!

Kev, my husband set up 3 traps around our house in Robinsons Bay. He had recently put a fresh mouse (which was caught in a mouse trap in our pantry) in the DoC 150 tunnel trap - on our garden path.

I let out a “woohoo!” when he told me we caught a stoat. I can’t believe it. Right next to our front door. After hiking for 3 hours resetting traps, hoping for a stoat... we got one. Just not where expected.

So, the moral of the story I guess is: it’s ok to feel defeated. Trapping is hard work. Sometimes you feel like you’re not getting anywhere - finding empty traps and mouldy bait, and you really can’t be assed hiking up a slippery track, through fog in the bracing cold. But, feeling the positive energy of your community behind you, hearing the fantails in conversation around you, seeing more and more Weta and Gecko’s in the hotels and Kororā just nesting in exposed positions – There’s no better form of motivation. Especially when you get home to find a dead stoat at your front door and a smiling husband.

By Ave.