Happily Ever After

Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running

Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.

There's Been A Murder

by Russell Turner - 21:28 on 24 July 2016

The Great Siskin Slaughter of 2016 is at last at an end. An ugly but very effective wooden barrier now separates the area of spilled seed beneath the bird feeder and the shadowed clump of foliage where patient moggies used to loiter before pouncing.

But what's good news for birds is not so good for other small game. After several death-free days (although I did rescue a shrew yesterday from The Grey Tormentor) this morning I walked downstairs to find, in the middle of the living room carpet, one dead pygmy shrew, one small pile of unidentifiable innards, and one dead but unmarked mole.

That's right. Not a vole. A mole. And seen out of context you can appreciate how big they are.

Molehills are a regular feature of The Rural Retreat's lush sward, but as I've no aspirations to a Wimbledon-standard lawn I'm happy to live and let live. Denied flying prey, cats clearly have other ideas.

Willow was asleep in the bedroom atop her blanket chest when I went to bed, and was still there in the morning, and Maia's hunting instincts go little further than snapping at passing butterflies, so Pandora is prime suspect in the mole murder. How The Tabby Terror got it through the cat-flap is a mystery.

Hopefully, this is not a sign of cats seeking bigger and bigger targets, or one morning we may wake to the shriek of a moggy with a mouthful of hedgehog spines.

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