Cute Factor
I live in the country, in a little cottage surrounded by fields, hedges and a WHOLE LOT OF WILDLIFE . Hornets, horse flies, bats, squirrels, frogs, newts and mice to name but a few. They come with the seasons and take no notice of my screams and screeches. I’m toughening up through necessity rather than choice. I still need rubber gloves to pick up a frog but when Puss brings in a mouse and lets it go, I can leap off the sofa, onto the floor and catch it with my bare hands in two seconds flat. The challenge is to catch the mouse before it gets under the sofa.
The boundaries I set mean nothing to the wildlife and I often wonder if I’m the intruder and not them. Have you ever seen those little clear perspex boxes you can fill with bird seed and stick to your window so the blue tits and finches can come and feast when they are busy nesting. Grabbing a quick snack as they flit from tree, hedge, nest and back again. They can be quite fussy, only picking out the seeds they want and throwing the other seeds to the ground. However, Mrs Blackbird and the pigeons are below enjoying the blue tits cast offs. Pip and I named it the Bus Shelter. All was idylic, the sun shone, the blossom bloomed and the birds tweeted until one evening there was a knock at my window … and again …. and then a tap, tap…. I peaked through the curtains but I couldn’t see anything and so I went back to the sofa. Knock, tap, knock, there it was again. I grabbed my torch and looked again and there was Ratty sitting in the bus shelter. Well more wedged into the bus shelter happily gorging on all of the seeds. It would be the equivalent of me launching myself into a huge tub of Quality Street. There I would sit in amongst the strawberry creams, toffee pennies and the purple ones, the smell of chocolate sending me into a dopamine trance like state. He wasn’t budging for anyone, life was good, life was easy.
We co existed for some time. Spring continued and summer followed until one day I noticed a young rat climbing up the japonica bush next to the bus shelter and then I noticed another and another. Six I counted in total. “How many is an infestation?” I asked Andrew one day. “That many” he replied.
The Bus Shelter has been removed and replaced with a suet block that hangs from a thin branch that can only take the weight of a bird and not a rat. Ratty has upsticks and relocated. I haven’t seen him in the chicken coop or the compost heap so for now he must be hanging out at the neighbours.