Cyril's back

A couple of pictures to keep you up to date with how nearly the barge approaches completion; the hull anyway. The Project Managers have even now started to buy paint for the volunteers to slap on (sorry. to apply carefully by small roller in the prescribed order of coats as laid down in the official painting scheme) at an imminent volunteer day.

These two shots though are of inside the hull and show a recent volunteer day where the boys (and girls) were shovelling out the three-years accumulation of sawdust, and also what will be the floor of the aft cabin (the skippers "stateroom" as it was called. In the day, these were quite luxurious being all panelled with dark wood and highly polished).

Meanwhile, we chug gently through the Christmas break not doing a great deal and mainly enjoying not having to go to work. Mum is standing at the back door on one morning idly watching the scenery, when our old chum the female sparrowhawk whooshes in out of nowhere to snatch a starling or sparrow (it happened too fast for Mum to see which) out of the top of the holly, just a quiet thump of heavier bird of prey against light song-bird, a few brief screams of consternation from the victim and it's peers and then silence as the hawk curved away and the rest of the bird population collectively gulped and got itself back together.

Also back is Cyril the Squirrel, or one of his mates, regularly visiting the bird feeders and in particular the peanut dispenser. I like to sit upstairs in the bedroom window now, keeping an eye on my territory and sometimes the little s*d is right up there with me on the sparrow box just outside my window, not 6 inches away beyond the double glazing. That seems to give him enough confidence not to flee even when I give him my best 'I'm gonna get you!' look. I end up glued to the spot twicthing with excitement but unable to do anything.

More fun is when he does scarper off down the garden fence up out of dog range but still fun to chase. The I can squeak, jump off the sill and land with a thump that vibrates the house, tear down the stairs and scrabbling on the laminated floor towards the back door, just a-hoping that there will be a human there to open the door in time before I slam into it.

All the best

Deefer

We know the sound

It's no good you thinking you can sneak up into the loft when we're down the garden, Dad! We have very good hearing and we KNOW that sound - the screech of the loft ladder, and it stirs in our veins, memories of Cyril the Squirrel (see earlier post "Killer Queen"). We race back up the garden and rush upstairs, and we shout furiously up the loft ladder at you through the hatch!

Don't kid a kidder!
Deefer

Killer Queen

The dog-owners have reclaimed the Rec after the snow-man builders retreated in the thaw, so we've had a good walk tonight in which we meet old friends Alfie the young Cav, and Patch, the rather portly JR. I also run away screaming from bouncy young new-kid-on-the-block brown-bear of a Newfoundland "Ava". She may not have got within 4 feet of me but I was outta there screaming like a stuck pig.

But the fun started when we got home and I dive straight under the kitchen sink and start squeaking like I'm in prey mode. I never go under there, so Dad suspects we either have a mouse or a rat. He starts removing cleaning materials and searches with a torch but to no avail. Eventually it all goes quiet, we all relax and off he goes to chop wood.

This is my cunning plan! If he'd known there was a squirrel there and what I was about to do to it, he'd have spoiled my fun - all that nonsense about humane traps and re-releasing them.... pah! While he's down the shed chopping the kindling I drag the little varmint out and by the time he gets back I have it despatched and on display on the hall floor.

Our running scores are now

Haggis: 1 slug and half a squirrel (joint kill with Meggie)

Megan: 40-odd rats during the chicken residence plus half a squirrel

Deefer: 2 squirrels

I may not yet be in the premiership, but Meg's hunting days are over and I am still a young dog....... Bring it on

Deefer

DEFCON 3

That Cyril will be the death of us all. He's back this morning and a-scampering around above our heads as we lie reading the papers (well the humans are anyway). There must me more than one hole.... take us to Def-Con 3 !!!

The humans have got hold of a boxed set of West Wing DVDs and have definitely been overdosing on the White House and all things politically American.

I am taken up into the loft to explore, and Dad checks the trap to find it empty but un-sprung. Cyril has had the peanut butter-smeared walnut off the spike without springing the trap, and the evidence (clean, neatly halved walnut shell a couple of yards away) has Mum saying "Clever little devil, isn't he...." Too clever for his own good if you ask me. Dad, I was enjoying that scurry around in the loft and just because I wouldn't come back for an hour, there was no need to grab me by the scruff and haul me out of there!

So, as the wind started to blow and the snow started to fall, Dad had the extension ladder out front and a can of "No More Big Gaps" (it's an aerosol can of expanding foam which sets hard in the cavity) in one hand. He was up at gutter level filling all the visible holes with the stuff.

The trap is re-set with cheese and peanut butter, and we await developments.

Pictures of pretty snow soon, all being well. It's coming down impressively at this stage. We still won't beleive it till we see it, though, lying on the ground several inches thick.

Look after yourselves

Deefski

Too Easy

Bam! Too easy! Cyril is in the trap within an hour. Now Dad has a problem - how to keep a squirrel reasonably happy in a trap right through the night and round to morning when we can take him away from here sufficient distance.

Naturally, I offer to help - that's me looking up at the loft-hatch from the bottom of the ladder "calmly" offering to assist. (Mum says more like dancing around, squeaking and pleading to be allowed to come up into the loft where the daft humans have a squirrel in a trap which they actually want to keep alive !! How absurd is that?)

I'm shut in the loo while the animal is brought down the ladder. Mum and Dad decide to release him on the back terrace hoping he'll flee and be so upset by the trapping experience, he never comes back. Ha! He scampers right, dives back into the Albertine rose, up the back of the house, out round the soffit and gutters, and over the roof, headed, we guess, straight back to the hole (now blocked) back into his nice warm loft.

A pic here, too of him in the trap and, for good measure, one of the tiny hole down into the gable end above the bay where Dad (not a small bloke) has to crawl in order to get at the starling/squirrel hole.

A friend on one of Mum's Internet chat sites happily informs us that we have just broken the law - the release of wild animals "into the wild" is forbidden by the Countryside and Wildlife Act 1981..... oops

http://www.jncc.gov.uk/page-3614

Since the release day (Wednesday) we have heard squirrelly scrabblings only once, and we now think this is what has happened. When Dad blocked the holes on Sunday, Cyril may have been hidden up in the loft, keeping quiet. He was then effectively trapped in the loft, unbeknownst to us, round till Wednesday without food or water. When Dad set the trap, he must have been starving, and dived on the offered cheese and peanut butter, heedless of the trap dangers.

By trapping and releasing him outdoors, we probably saved his life. Anyway, so far, other than those quick scrabblings, which we now think were him outside the blocks trying to find his way back in, it's all gone quiet. My Client humbly submits m'lud, that we did not release him "into the wild" as he was set free on the very civilised terrace table and, anyway, our actions were well intentioned..... (gulp).

For now though, the trap is up there, re-set, and armed with a peanut butter-smeared walnut, and all ears are prick'd for the sound of squirrelly feet on the loft boards again.

One down-side to this, of course, is that the starling are also excluded from nesting in that gable this spring.

Deefer

He's Back !!!

Just for fun a couple of pics of a bit of successful growing - an Unwins indoor mushroom growing kit Dad got for Christmas, now pushing out resonably sized cups, very fresh, firm and tasty. Can you have food-feet instead of food miles? These walk just about 10 paces from cut to kitchen!

He's Back! Last night, any thoughts Mum and Dad had that my deterrent scamperings round the loft, and Dad's shoring up holes with expanding foam and weldmesh would stop Cyril the Squirrel were blown away by the sounds of squirrels line-dancing upstairs. Probably only one in fact (though one squirrel can manage to sound like a soccer squad on a boarded out loft space.

Plan-B. We still have, in the shed, a live-trap Dad used to use for r*ts when they (I wasn't born yet) first had chooks. I gather that Meggie became much more effective at despatching r*ts than the trap was at ever catching them, so "we" soon changed from dropping them off at the top of Detling Hill, alive and kicking, on Dad's way to work (15 miles from here!), to quietly disposing of chewed, skeletally challenged... um... corpses.

This device is now baited with cheese and peanut butter, and set up in the loft space. It will, of course, be checked regularly, but we are hoping we can export yet more livestock in the direction of Detling. Mum and Dad will be lying in bed tonight waiting for the loud and metallic "Ker-choingggg!" the thing makes when sprung.

Megan and I were. of course, given another carry up the ladder and a chance to run around in the loft, sniffing under and behind boxes just in case Cyril was in residence. He was long gone!

What fun!

Deefski

Seasalter

Bank Holiday Monday, and Dad only has to work till 10 am. Then we are FREE to go an enormous walk. Mum drops us of at the Old Sportsman pub in Seasalter, and we walk back home along the sea wall. 2 and a half hours nice and flat to suit poor aul' Meggie's tired old legs. She ambles along with a rolling gait, like a slow rolling run which she's favoured, I gather, since she went through the Cushings episode and her hips got a bit weak. She's Ok now on the daily Vetoryl, but never got back into that loping dog-trot that the rest of us use.

Dad took the binoculars to see what sea birds we could see, and watched 4 marsh harriers wheeling and soaring over the fields in the thermals, 2 pairs apparently squabbling over territory. Nice

Back at the ranch our old friend Cyril the Squirrel is back. He (or possibly she) sneaks up the fence line and launches himself into the Albertine rose growing all over the back of our house. We go mad at the scritching and scratching noises but to no avail. He's 10 feet off the deck and well surrounded by Albertine's wicked thorns. Megan can wheedle and plead all she likes but he will not come down for a game of chase.

He tends to stay there, once cornered till it's nearly dark, and then scurry off back to the old railway bank and the thick tangled sycamore woods. he's almost stopped coming once the building work started out the back of us, presumably put off by the diggers and cleared ground, but now he's back. The humans sometimes see him first, and whisper to each other "The "squ**" (pronounced "skwuh") is here", but we suss it fairly quickly anyway

We have foxes too, out the back, screaming their yowling-yappy bark at 2 in the morning and sending us racing downstairs to be let out to repel boarders.

Hope you had a good Easter

Deefer