More Beastly Tales

My mum and dad have a lovely garden.  It used to be woodland, way back in the mists of whenever, and their quarter acre plot is still full of magnificent trees and shade loving plants.

Despite the fact that it is now hemmed in by houses, there is still a fair amount of wildlife frisking about in it, something which Tess would love, were she younger and more agile.  Even so, she still has her moments.

Last year she managed to catch a frog and set it loose in the house.  She is not, and never has been, keen on murdering creatures, or eating them.  She just likes the thrill of the chase.  And when she has caught whatever it is she has been stalking, she brings it into the house as a gift.

Frogs are interesting in captivity.  They make their way to the nearest water source they can find, and stay there, trembling, and hoping that someone will release them back into the wild.  This frog found the upstairs loo seat was open, and hopped in, causing much consternation to my aged Italian aunt when she staggered across the landing to perform her morning ablutions the next day.

Tilly took a picture for posterity.

Lovely.

Previously, way back in the mists of time, one summer when I was home from university, we had another frog in the loo incident.  This time it was my mum who found it, in the middle of the night, when she hadn’t got her glasses on.  The screaming and running about on the landing naked woke us all up.  From mum, that is, not the poor frog.  We approached the loo with caution because in her blind panic mum had decided it was a snake.  And this was what she was screaming at the top of her lungs as she lapped the landing for the seventeenth time…

‘SNAAAAAAKKKEEEEEEE!’ I believe was her exact cry.

She was almost as fast round the landing as she was round the hall when an earwig shot down her vest during a particularly fierce ironing session once.  If there was ever an olympic event entitled strip and run, she would be a gold medallist.  She is a ninja. A positive ninja.

As Derek is housebound due to being lady bits intacta at the moment, I do not have to worry about this kind of animal incursion yet.

But it is in the back of my mind as a potential hazard which Jason must be inoculated against (much like rabies).  He is Derek tolerant at the moment, but I can’t say the love fest is as mutual between them as I would like.  If he, like UE, when we had Derek’s predecessor, Pinky,  ends up as the recipient of a live mouse in his shoe, I cannot see things ending well.

Even if it does make me laugh immoderately.

Mum and dad’s house, as you know, by the fact that they have a ruddy big hole cut in the wall in lieu of a cat flap, is open to the elements rather.  They also have a beautiful verandah across the back of the house.  My dad likes to live on the verandah, even in the harshest of weather.  He seems to feel no cold whatsoever.  Unlike the rest of us.  He is forever flinging doors and windows open while we all huddle round a radiator, whimpering.  He would have made an excellent matron in a 1950′s T.B. clinic.

It may also explain why he has more than a passing fondness for the bracing air of the East Coast, and a peculiar devotion to Skegness.

As their house is accessible to wildlife, the local flora and fauna like to take advantage of this in times of extremis, and not just when they’re being chased by cats.

At one time or another they have been visited by hedgehogs, dogs, muntjac deer, mice, escaped ferrets and plentiful birds, as well as a trillion cats with loose morals.  One day I must relate to you the time my parents left me in charge of two small children (admittedly my own), my aged Italian Aunt ( and out pops the cloven hoof, Bertie), my frail grandmother, a highly skittish muntjac deer and an escaped pedigree ferret being hunted by an escaped pedigree ferret breeder.

It was a long weekend.

The other interloper that my parents enjoy visits from are bats.  Once, when I brought a boyfriend who was eventually to be my fiance (thank goodness he never made it to husband status), home to visit the parental pile, he found a dead bat folded up in a vase in the dining room.  He was not impressed by this at all (I knew I made the right decision in not marrying him).  We were all hysterical with laughter (which did not help), and terribly impressed.  I have often pondered how the bat managed to get in the vase.  It was folded up so very neatly.

Last week they had another bat incident.  One flew into the house.  My mother saw it, and began following it round in an attempt to shoo it out again.  My dad didn’t see it. After about half an hour, after he had accused her of imagining things, they concentrated on having an accusatory row along the lines of: ‘You’re mad’, ‘No, you’re blind’ etc, and forgot about the bat.

The next morning when mum went downstairs to wait hand and foot on the cat, she found the bat cowering in a corner of the cat’s litter tray.  The cat has a litter tray which she never uses. She loathes the idea of doing her business in the house and would rather explode with shame.  Nevertheless, there is a litter tray full of sand in case of emergencies.  I expect it will come in very handy if there is ever a small, litter tray shaped fire that needs putting out.  Or a bat in need of refuge.

The poor bat was squeaking and woeful and very sandy.

Mum picked it up and thought about washing it (it being all sandy and all). Then she thought better of it.

Then she thought about trying to feed it.

But she realised that bats probably don’t eat Gourmet cat food with 90% chicken, or cheese sandwiches.

So she very carefully took it outside and hooked it onto a tree branch in the hope that it would shake the sand from its wings and fly off and be free.

It’s hard to know what to do for the best for a bat, as she so rightly said.

With all her clothes on, for once.

 

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