TANGRAM

FRANCISCANCE

SHADOWS ON THE CARPET

RAT TRAP

Written as somebody who has never knowingly killed a rat, in five decades of gently but firmly devising ways of trying to discourage and outwit them in a wide variety of domestic circumstances, including living next to a farm!

SQUIRREL-PROOF

HOGS IN THE HEDGE

DOGS AT POLLING STATIONS

SQUIRREL PRAYER

TIBETAN TEMPLE SENTINELS & TAP DANCING BLACKBIRDS

The Lhasa Apsos I'm dog-sitting are having a wonderful time! This Sunday, they're doing what comes naturally, fulfilling their ancestral role of temple sentinel, whistle-blowing on intruders.

Lhasas are a breed that originates in Tibet. Kept as watchdogs in Buddhist temples and monasteries, their hearing is incredibly acute. When they catch wind of anything they think the temple inhabitants really need to know, they tell you, in no uncertain terms. Woof! Woof! (and in case you're in any doubt) Woof!

If necessary, they'll strut outside to prove they mean business, stubborn, independent, self-possessed. Somebody has to be told! If they were to catch up with the offenders, there would likely be much licking and wagging, rather than an international incident.

These days, the intruder may not be a stray Himalayan antelope, bear or lynx, a visiting dignitary or the Dalai Lama dropping by for a steaming cup of Po Cha.

At my house, interlopers might be no more than busy Blackbirds tap dancing on the conservatory roof!

The Lhasas are mesmerised by the constant comings and goings of the parent birds as they make their Spring food-gathering forays on behalf of their nestlings. Heads tilt, ears cock, eyes track overhead silhouettes of unseen strangers chasing one another across the opaque slats.

The sheer bare-faced effrontery of these winged trespassers! How very dare they? Toe tapping back and forth, disturbing the tranquillity of the Lhasas' monastic sanctuary!

Now the dogs are resting after their action-packed shift. No Tibetan silk brocade cushions for these honoured temple guards, but they're much too well-bred to complain!

THE WAY TO FILL A DOG-SHAPED HOLE IN YOUR HEART

Lhasa lad

There's only one way to fill that dog-shaped hole in my heart. A dog! Or two!

I lost my soulmate Sheltie some years ago. I never once imagined living without a dog for the rest of my days. But chronic ill health, enforced early retirement and the financial restraints that brings had other ideas. I can no longer afford to give a dog the life with me that faithful friend deserves.

Instead, I dogsit. 
Just for friends, for family, sometimes for charity. 
The owners are people who know me, trust me totally, share their precious pets with me while they go on holiday.

Like me, these friends would never put their furry family member in kennels. So they bring them to me. I never ask for payment. The dogs' company's reward enough for me! Yet owners often insist on payment in kind, or whatever the going rate at a kennel might be, or a donation to my favourite charity, like INVEST IN M.E. RESEARCH. 

My long garden's big and secure enough to let dogs run and play to their hearts' content. The woods and walks are round the corner. I still have my old lad's toys and blankets to supplement their own if needs be.

Sometimes I'm just too poorly for a while and have to turn down prospective dog-sittings with regret. Of course, the various special regulars in question understand. But at times when I'm not house-bound or bed-bound, I take this delightful opportunity to put a little bit back into the doggy community, put a little piece of my heart back in place for a while.

This is one of those blessed times.

Here they are! My special VIP guests! (see pictures)

Mustn't keep them waiting.

As author Dean Koontz says:

"Once you have had a wonderful dog, a life without one, is a life diminished."

Lhasa lass

Me and my own Sheltie lad,
Pinch Mill Beck, South Yorkshire c 2004.

IT'S A RAT TRAP & YOU'VE BEEN CAUGHT

You know what they say:

'You're never more than six feet away from a rat.'

'Rats desert a sinking ship.'

Or what they sing: 'There's a rat in mi kitchen, what am I gonna do?'

Whether scientific truth, song lyric or urban myth, rats gravitate to human habitation.

No wonder. Humans, who throw away perfectly nutritious scraps as waste, feed birds, scatter seeds, must seem generous, even extravagant hosts to your average hungry rat.

Round here in South Yorkshire, the Brown Rat (Rattus Norvegicus) is our most frequent guest.

As regular readers know, I grew up in a nineteenth century railway cottage sandwiched between two farms, surrounded by farmland in a little mining valley. No surprise that rats featured in our daily lives.

We once found an overflowing nest of rats wriggling under my dad's garage where his motorbike and sidecar lived.

I'd read a storybook where the Rat King was a villain. The name "rat-king", I later learned, referred to a mysterious ring of rats stuck together by their knotted tails. Mythologised in folklore, preserved in museums and cabinets of curiosities, a 'rat-king' was once thought to be a cryptozoological phenomenon, taken by the superstitious as a bad omen.

These baby rats in the nest didn't seem very villainous to me.
Just tiny and vulnerable.

But for adults, they seemed much less welcome than other wildlife. The rats were disposed of without recourse to ratcatchers or environmental health. They had lives and needs and stories just like every other creature in the garden and fields beyond. It's just that humans recognise rats as a source of disease and danger. We discourage their residency, unless they're "fancy" and so kept as pets. We reject wild rats as enthusiastically as we welcome other animals to share our living space.

Our cat, also a refugee from a neighbouring farm, would often arrive at the back door, making that eerie gargling yowl of sadistic menace every cat owner recognises. She had a trophy in her mouth, preventing her from making a more musical miaow. If it was still fluttering, it was a bird. If it was small, a mouse, shrew or vole had met its fate in her jaws. Anything more cumbersome was invariably a rat. The birds and smaller rodents were rescued and freed. A captured rat was more likely to meet the wrong end of the coal shovel before being disposed of in the dustbin.
Much to the cat's disgust.

In my garden today, I see all sorts of welcome wildlife. Bank Vole, Field Mouse, Hedgehog, Grey Squirrel.

Then there's the Rat.

His arrival is less an occasion for reaching for the camera and notebook, and more for clapping and shooing. He's quite large, but predictable. He always follows the same course, his "rat run" between my garden and the neighbours'. He stops to feast under the bird feeders until he sees me move. Instantly he's off, often before any serious clapping and shooing can ensue.

One day I hurried to the spot under the hedge where he'd disappeared. I stamped my foot and did my best impression of a strangled cat, followed by what I hoped was a bloodcurdling growl. Then I became aware that my neighbour was out washing the patio and decided that strategy might well get me certified. Still, the rat didn't return. For half a day.

I'm quite envious of my mother's rats. They seem to live fast and die young. She lives in a middle terrace in a row of two-up-two-downs in a mining village ten miles away, not far from where I was born. No farms now, but more people. Rats are thriving. Her loft, where the electrics and water tanks are, joins on to the houses on either side. The rats have a clear run along the length of the terraces, at roof-level.

Most of the time they leave no evidence. No obvious droppings. No sounds of scratching or scampering. Their shenanigans are only exposed when the lights go out. When the electric cuts out altogether, that is.

Three times over the past couple of years, when the electric has unexpectedly gone off, a local workman has climbed up to see what's caused the power cut.

Short circuit?

Surge in the electric current?

No. There on the rafters lays the culprit.

Dead.

Electrocuted.

A rat with its teeth still clamped onto the wire it had been chewing.

Recently the firewalls between the old loft spaces have been plugged, the electric wires reinforced. The rats will have nowhere to run.

But like us, rats are evolving.

They'll be gathering round in their mysterious rat-king huddles, having a quick snifter from the birdbath and plotting their next move to outwit those pesky humans.

Still have no idea how this little rodent ended up dead in a hanging feeder.
I suspect it might have been dropped by an owl or other flying predator.

Goatsucker Harvest: Piper the Kooikerhondje, the Decoy Dog with a difference

Unless you've loved one, I guess you haven't googled what a Kooikerhondje looks like. A Kooiker Hound. A Dutch Decoy Dog. So here he is - Bram's Piper in Goatsucker Harvest looks something like this fella. A small spaniel, of Dutch ancestry, like Bram himself.

 Painted by Rembrandt and below in the foreground on a cushion in this painting by Jan Steen. 

Jan Steen "Doctor's Visit" oil on panel, 1661-2, Victoria & Albert Museum (Kooikerhondje in right foreground on cushion)

A faithful little working dog, bred to work in harmony with his human, entrancing wildfowl at the eendenkooi (duck cage). Piper's a bit special, as you'll discover, inseparable from Bram in his stewardship of the peat moors, at the decoy or in the pinfold. Almost human, you might say.

Four cuddly excuses!

Often, my reason for a big gap between blog entries is the fact I'm too sick to sit up/think/type/make sense/edit/etc to manage it. My blogging is erratic at best!

This time that's still the main reason. But I have an equally true but four times more appealing excuse!

With suppport, I've been dogsitting my friend's four darling dogs! So I'll just let you enjoy their antics caught on camera!