Eek! A Mouse

It's been a busy day on the Estate, but in something of a sporadic way. There have been times when the grass, trees and shrubs were alive with tits, sparrows, siskins, blackbirds, jackdaws and wretched magpies. But for a short while every now and then, there's a quiet period. It was during one of these lulls in avian activity that I noticed the Mouse has returned. Rushing back and forth picking up cornflakes and bulgar wheat (I'm out of birdseed) and taking them away to wherever its nest is under the badly laid path. It's a fieldmouse, so I'm OK with its presence, and have even been charmed in the past by its creeping within two feet of me to eat. Maybe I don't pose much of a threat, being so much bigger and slower than it is, unlike the magpies, whose shadows are enough to make it scamper.

And I have to say that it's much preferable to the rat I had last year which caused me to develop a good relationship with the Council Rat Man. His traps and poisons proved strangely ineffective for a while, but he eventually saw it off by ramming a huge bag of poison down its hole and covering with a big stone.