Nowt stranger than folk

Today we decided to home in on farms in the area between the Hot Zone and Botcheston, where there are just a handful of unaccounted black lab sightings. Ffion remarked to Tim, after seeing one with American type fencing, that it's funny that this section of the Wild West of Leicestershire reminded her of South Carolina (where her parents live) where there are very impoverished looking homesteads, but she'd never really noticed before becoming Mrs Observant post-Sky disappearance. We chatted to nice farmers, got nowhere, and left a flyer on the gatepost of one such property with barbed wire and no access.
An hour later the phone rang and excerpts from the conversation include "they're attracted to my place, stray dogs" "I saw a black labrador yesterday but thought it belonged to the gipsies who've put stables next to my fields" "he'll be alive - the chicken farm throws out carcasses all the time, he'd love that, they don't like the sanitised meat us humans put out for them" and in and amongst this wandering conversation "sometimes I keep the strays for a bit - no point taking the to kennels, they charge you know" and (honestly) "they dump dead dogs on this lane all the time you know. I buried 3 dogs last week. In plastic bags often, they are". Ffion maintained a calm voice, ascertained none of the 3 dogs was a black labrador, but established that the man may have seen a black lab a couple of times in the last few months.
This inspired Tori and Ffion to head back out and do more research. The black lab from yesterday did indeed belong to the stables people. All other farms knew about Sky but hadn't seen anything - although they thought now was a good time, now they're getting back out on the land after quite a harsh winter.
Ho hum!
Oh yes - lovely footage from the kennel camera of a yellow lab scoffing Sky's food and being dragged off by 4 young walkers. Amazing how it's always the labs find the food. Well all except one....