Dont drink the water!

Drought conditions continue on the Bonsai Mountain, leading to a bit of dispute amongst part time inhabitants. Our well is still dry which is only a tad inconvenient as it is the source of water animals. The stream is running dry, as pictured below with this years hatching of ducks and geese, but its still running, and once I clear the muck out of the reservoir the water will start flowing back into the storage tanks and all will be well. Our house water comes from a bore hole some 20 metres below ground just up from the stable and that's supplying everything and everyone. Which is a good thing.
The owner of The Ghost House has discovered a bad thing. His water is missing. Many years ago 1976, the year of the proper drought, he dug a 400 metre trench and laid a pipe in it from a collecting tank on the hill to his house. This has served him well for many years. Never let him down until this week. He turned his tap on and got the faintest trickle of reddish sludge from the tap. On tracing the pipe back he found it had been cut and now led to a water tank supplying horses belonging to someone else, the nice traveller man we meet every now and then. This is not cricket. Second only to putting a fence up in the wrong place, taking water from someone elses pipe is a crime that used to lead to deportation. A feud is in the offing, we wait and wonder who does what to whom next. This is better than TV.