Sam fights a wobbly year; the VW has to wait
Pareora man Sam Pierce counts himself as one of the lucky ones to come through 2020 okay, although he has had some “wobbly” moments.
During lockdown he started restoring his 1967 VW Beetle convertible in his sleepout. He managed to strip the rust, replace panels and take out the engine before finding he did not have enough tools to continue.
“[The year] 2020 started off pretty good but it got a bit wobbly in the middle there,” Pierce said.
Back at work as a pest controller once in alert level 3, he fell over and fractured his right wrist. The right-hander was off work for a number of weeks to recover and found it hard to maintain mortgage and bill payments on the 80 per cent pay he received through ACC.
By this stage he had the tools to get back into the car restoration but not enough income to fund it.
“I had to prioritise house and bills first.”
Once healed his contract ended in August, so he used his savings to get by until he found another job.
His wrist was still tender, and he discovered he had also pulled tendons in his left arm as he broke his fall.
Scared of getting into too much debt he sold his dinghy, which he had used for fishing, to pay bills, he took on a job at a wool press, then unloading a boat, and now he’s picking apples as well as establishing his own pest control business, Samuel Pierce Pest Control.
“There is no such thing as light duties in pest control.”
The former chef, who prefers being outside, traps and shoots rabbits, hares, possums and wallabies.
“I don’t enjoy killing things but it needs to be done to make a positive impact for all our native wild life and plant life.”
He said without natural predators humans had to intervene to keep pests under control.
Trapping and shooting was preferable to poison, as poison killed everything, Pierce said.
Though pest control attracts negative comments Pierce said his aim is for a fast death in the cleanest manner.
He sets the traps in the evening then checks them at 3am, then again after his day’s work at the orchard. Invariably the traps were empty in the afternoons. He will shoot the animals caught, quickly and humanely, as well as any pests he sees.
After recently finalising an agreement with a pet food company, from the new year he will be selling the meat from the pests he catches for pet food and offering the pest management control service free to farmers in exchange.
The pest controller said it was hard to estimate how many pests he caught as it depended on the land and area but recently he caught 20 wallabies in about 15 minutes along a nearby river bank.
Pierce said 2020 had been “a s... year but I still have a job and a house. It’s not the end of the world . . . I got a few deer so the freezer’s full.”
As for the VW it will just have to wait, he said.