Carnage at the Castle

When I decided to lengthen and widen the entrance to my Fantic’s bike-port (or lean-to, as it’s probably described more accurately)…

…it became necessary to re-locate the hedge-hog house…

…as mentioned in these earlier blogs 1 and 2. I was concerned that the occupants might have been disturbed by the ‘building’s’ uprooting, so set up a camera to check out the scene, so to speak. I needn’t have been worried; life clearly carried on as normal…

Hey, doesn’t this next mouse look rather like the Plastic Annihilator?

Whatever, once the task was complete (and having surveyed the rest of the garden) I found myself surplus one box-like flower pot that had been split open by repeated winter freezing. So I up-ended it and created a mouse ‘castle’…

Well a ‘ruin’ anyway. Naturally I tossed a few seeds, fat pellets, and what-have-you inside it; set up a camera; and awaited developments. Due, probably to a sudden downpour, the first to arrive were some small black slugs…

But before long the Plastic Annihilator and his buddy – we’ll call it Brian – joined the feast…

PA and Brian remained for some while, before being supplanted by a late-coming  vole of some kind…

Vole didn’t stay long, because minutes later an unexpected caller…er… called…

Yeah…I do have an incumbent hedgehog afterall. Hoorah!

Oh, but what of the small black slugs?

Gobbled up and polished off, that’s what. Carnage at the Castle!

The Plastic Annihilator!

For many years, before I assumed the role, my wife would keep the feed for the wild birds in our garden in a transparent plastic bucket with matching lid and a similar breakfast cereal container. These proved sufficient to keep the contents inside safe from the rodents that would have liked to eat them…until a few days ago when I found this on the shed floor…

Judging by the condition of the bucket lid, a very smart rodent had discovered a way of breaching my defences…

It simply sat on the inner surface of the lid and chewed around the edge until the plastic sagged enough for it to gain purchase on the lid itself and make a hole through which it could enter Alladdin’s Cave. The following day I replaced the lid with a spare. It didn’t survive the night. Transfering the contents of the bucket into the cereal container, I felt confident that no further losses would be incurred. I was wrong. Oh dear…

Clearly I was up against something considerably more imposing than a mere mouse. More like a Meerkat. So, after replacing the ruined container with a wooden wine box, I set up a camera to capture images of the invincible perpetrator. What could it be? It’s jaws must be incredibly powerful. A super-rat perhaps? Then the images came in…

Just a diddy little house mouse. Nothing special at all. Or is it? I call my four-legged un-buddy Andromeda Strain. If you’ve ever seen the movie of the same name, you’ll know why. The Andromeda Strain was a micro-organism that destroyed plastic and threatened the entire world. However, in real life, the wooden box defeated it entirely.  Those ravaging gnashers barely scratched the surface. Who’d have thought? We’ll see what tonight brings though: I’m expecting carnage.

Has ‘Helping the Hedgehog’ Helped?

Well if the following picture is to be believed, someone has clearly moved into the Hedgehog Over-Wintering House at the bottom of my garden. Look, they’ve planted a nice flower outside the porch…

But since no one responded to a polite knock, I thought it best to spy on them – by installing a night-vision camera, I’m sorry to say, t’was not a spiky critter that emerged into the darkness; but one of these…

Oh, well, at least the property isn’t laying vacant. Some smart little rodent has spotted the potential. There, I told you hedgehogs were dumb-asses!

 

Portrait of Nature: Poised and Ready for Action.

Well, running away in a blind panic, that is…

The Garden Welcomes the Family

I don’t use it often, but I have one of those trail / hunter cameras that take pictures all by themselves. The other day I placed some bird food in a hanging basket thing and set the camera up upon my even-less-often-used tripod; then awaited developments. I wasn’t surprised when the first ‘guest’ was a resident Robin…

It took him/her about a half-second to make the decision to enter the store…

The camera took rather longer to react – which (for once) was a good thing…

…otherwise all we would have to view is the Robin’s arse hole. He/she was so impressed with the fare that he/she came back later to feast with his/her wife/husband and three kids. Here’s one of them…

All three have grown very tame, and I think it’s a shame that before long they will be driven off to find territories of their own by their parents. Guess I’ll have to content myself with Mr and Mrs Mouse who live in the shed…

…which my pet chug (chihuahua/pug cross) loves to chase all around the shrubbery – along with the lonesome vole…

And, of course, terrorise visiting squirells…

For a tiny postage stamp garden, it certainly is wildlife-friendly. Or at least it would be, if it wasn’t for this monster…