More animals

After seeing a peacock outside our van and a dead wallaby by the roadside last week, nature invaded home. Firstly and unusually, there was the squirrel prancing upon the fence between our garden and our neighbours'.

Then, less welcome, is the wasps' nest in the other neighbours' roof eaves, only about four feet from my office window. I have to leave our window shut even when it's sunny, as the wasps fly by in such numbers. There seem to be more by the day.

Even less welcome was the rat. Our two cats had been acting strangely for a couple of days, obviously looking for something, when Rio came into the kitchen late one night and saw a young rat. It ran to hide behind our kitchen cabinets, then kept reappearing at intervals over the next few nights until yesterday we caught the little sod [so sweet, so young] and I dropped it into the pond. Bad move! It swam to some weed, then scampered across that in a jesus-like fashion and escaped into the garden.

Its freedom didn't last long. Smirnoff recaptured and returned it to our kitchen again this afternoon, obviously wanting something lively to play with. Moonface and I cornered the little rat again, but this time Moonface wore thick leather gauntlets so she could scoop it into her hands, take it outside and fling it hard down onto the concrete paving. It twitched, then died. Its body is in the bin. I hope that the cats don't bring any more into the house: I guess that where there's one young rat, there's likely to be a whole family of the vile creatures.


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