The billabong
There was a billabong not far from our place. If anybody ever wanted to get rid of any unwanted puppies or kittens it was no problem, all they had to do was to put them in a sugar bag with a couple of house bricks, tie the top of the bag and toss it in the billabong. You could see dozens of these bags half submerged floating around covered in a filthy green slime all over the place.
The billabong was also home to thousands of crayfish, which by using various means were not that hard to catch. I would take them home and mum would put them in a saucepan and proceed to boil them on the gas stove, you could see filthy brown slimy bubbles coming out of them. I never told mum about the cats and the dogs. How we all did not come down with some serious disease I will never know, we must have all had an iron constitution.
After a lot of rain most billabongs were home to hundreds of frogs. The bloody things would keep you awake all night with their croaking, but we would get our own back the next morning. We got stuck into them with our catapults, it was great fun. We would often see a frog on top of another one; we used to call them double deckers, not knowing in our youthful ignorance what it was all about. Small birds like sparrows, starlings and pee-wits were easy prey with the catapult but the bigger birds required the use of the air-rifle.