Back to Normal

After our brief flirtation with Night Shift working, Dad comes back to bed at 06:00 this morning and we hang on in there even with Mum going off to work normally. Where Dad is is where a dog should be, even if it's rather sleepy "action".

At just gone midday something wakes us all up - dogs leap into action and accelerate away across the bed..... as it happens, right across Dad's "moobs". Arghhhh!!! A rude awakening or what? Never mind, we are soon forgiven, and we have the rest of the day with Dad awake and around. There's something to be said for these night hours.

The garden is now choc-a-block with baby birds doing "flying school". The fences are peopled by rows of baby brown starlings sitting next to a Mum or a Dad and screeching at him/her to get fed, and next to these are similar families of sparrows, the babies sit crouched with trembling wings. Blackbirds all up and down the street are "Chuck- Chuck" ing in alarm at some threat. Sad to say, at least we know it's not "our cats" this year.

Have a good one

Deefer

Flying School

The humans have gone mad this weekend, pruning everything that they could get their secateurs round (and sawing things they couldn't) - the myrtle, the flowering cherry, beech hedge, jasmine, choysia (not sure of the spelling of that one!) and the guelder rose. Whole builders bags of tree were taken to the tip. More plants arrived and bags of very dig-able shredded bark mulch. We are transformed.

The garden is a veritable flying school of brown baby starlings and fluffy sparrow fledgelings. It had also gone suspiciously quiet around the bluetit box (no parent birds swearing at anyone who went near the compost bins) so Dad checked and , indeed, the babies have successfully flown. That made Dad also check the "dunnock" box near the holly tree, now well secluded among burgeoning clematis. Sadly, an abandonned nest with cold eggs - and not (as we'd thought, dunnock (blue), but three white eggs flecked with red/brown, of robins. Gulp! Presumably the nest which would have been incubated by the mother robin I "terminated" on 20th April. Mum is therefore muttering darkly "There Deefs - not ONE robin but FOUR!". The evil that Westies do lives after them... the good is often interr-ed with their bones......

Rain rain and more rain today. Must be the Bank Holiday!

Deefs

Exhibit A

I have been convicted once more on the thinnest of grounds. My photo is of "Exhibit A" as produced by the Counsel for the Prosecution, to whit, one electric toothbrush, chewed. M'Lud! What does that prove. "Deefer ...... (sonorous resounding tones) .... you are an habitual criminal who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard, and presumably regards enprisonment in the same casual manner....."

I mean, Gor Blimey Mary Poppins - just coz ....

a) It was chewed
b) It had been at pup level on the charger
c) The bits were all in my bed
d) I chew stuff
e) They end up in my bed in bits

I do not feel this is grounds for suspicion, never mind conviction. Mum will not cuddle me tonight - "Go away! You ate my Toothbrush!"

Meanwhile, the garden is a flying school for dozens of baby starlings. Dad was wondering how come the suet blocks on the bird feeder went down so quickly. Mum pointed out that there were three baby starlings lined up along the top, and a parent bird clinging to the mesh, ripping bits off and passing them the 2 inches up to the babies. Hardly a struggle for survival. Not quite, wresting a living from the parched ground. Not nature red in tooth and claw, birds clinging onto life by the skin of their teeth.

Mind you, the humans can't talk. I think we're on the venison steaks tonight on the terrace. If they're lucky it won't tank down with rain. We'll be lucky if we see any. I don't know. The way they treat convicts these days - it's criminal

Have a great weekend

Deefs