We've nearly finished dealing with the plague of clothes moths, only the rugs and carpets to be done, but now we have mice. They seem to be carrying a super-intelligence gene as they have developed a strategy for getting peanut butter off the traps without tripping them. So far I've only caught one. I'm beginning to develop a respect for them and may be going soft enough to leave them be. However, I still remember how they made a nest in my winter wellies a couple of years back with the left one turned into living quarters made cosy with the boot linings and my socks and the right one used as a larder for the peanuts and other bird food they had filched from the bird food store.
I prefer them to the grey squirrels that raid the bird feeders in the garden. They have a strategy of getting into a position that prevents my getting a clear shot at them by ensuring that they have the car behind them so that a miss would mean a dent in the car or a broken windscreen. They do provide competition for the rooks, jackdaws and magpies all of whom also fight with the smaller birds on the bird feeder..
Part of the problem is that there are fewer cats in our hamlet now. Our possy of pussies has suffered from the road which has become a rat run into Oxford and neither we nor our neighbours feel like replacing them. The last three are all now pretty old and past their prime hunting years.
As I write now, the meadow beside our house has become a lake as the River Ray has overflowed its banks. We now have a family of swans feeding beside the vegetable plot. How long before the woodpile starts floating away downstream to Oxford? This usually means that the moles under the meadow start to migrate uphill into our vegetable garden.
So you can see, what with moths, mice, marauding birds and squirrels and now the floods, what is the next plague to come? I almost, but not quite feel like running away to the city. Its not much better in France. There we get plagues of tourists!
I prefer them to the grey squirrels that raid the bird feeders in the garden. They have a strategy of getting into a position that prevents my getting a clear shot at them by ensuring that they have the car behind them so that a miss would mean a dent in the car or a broken windscreen. They do provide competition for the rooks, jackdaws and magpies all of whom also fight with the smaller birds on the bird feeder..
Part of the problem is that there are fewer cats in our hamlet now. Our possy of pussies has suffered from the road which has become a rat run into Oxford and neither we nor our neighbours feel like replacing them. The last three are all now pretty old and past their prime hunting years.
As I write now, the meadow beside our house has become a lake as the River Ray has overflowed its banks. We now have a family of swans feeding beside the vegetable plot. How long before the woodpile starts floating away downstream to Oxford? This usually means that the moles under the meadow start to migrate uphill into our vegetable garden.
So you can see, what with moths, mice, marauding birds and squirrels and now the floods, what is the next plague to come? I almost, but not quite feel like running away to the city. Its not much better in France. There we get plagues of tourists!
