Creatures: latest…

Chouette:

We’ve had a visit from the owl in the grenier (feathers, owl pellet & droppings tell a clear story!)…

I had hoped he’d gone elsewhere (especially when I found owl pellets in the barn – quite happy for him to be there), as I’m in the process of cleaning the floor up there.

Frog:

I went to the loo one night, & my eyes had been really watery, so when I came back into the bedroom I was only slightly surprised to see a drop of water by the door.

I didn’t think I could have had a teardrop quite that big, so I had a closer look.

When the “teardrop” blinked at me, I knew I’d have to wipe away the tears properly!

Needless to say, he got turfed out pretty pronto!

[No, it’s not true they turn into princes if you kiss them!]

Bêtes volantes:

I saw a dragonfly – I’d swear he was in camouflage gear, but he was gone too quickly for me to get the camera, so I’ll never know. Pretty impressive size, though.

Brimstone & chalk hill blue (I think) were another couple of butterflies I can add to my list, but probably won’t as they weren’t in the garden, but in the fields behind…

Aoûtats: that’s harvest mites to you & me. Trust me – these chaps are to be avoided!!

You think it's just a cloud of (virtually) colourless little flies, but they carry passengers...

I was in the pharmacy asking whether they had any insect repellent that I could spray on my clothing (they seem to get trapped under waist-bands, bra-straps, knicker-elastic – anywhere it’s constricted – and try to bite their way out!), when an older lady came over to help.

Fortunately she asked all the right questions. My mixture of improvisation & mime is usually successful in communicating what I want, but I didn’t relish doing: “And they lodge under my knicker-elastic and everywhere my bra touches” without knowing the words for “knickers”, “elastic” or “bra”! Underwiring I couldn’t even begin to guess at…

Thankfully, the combination of cooling weather (the only reason I was happy for the temperature to drop), and changing seasons meant that I only had one bite after spraying my clothing with the insecticide.

Next time I work under the trees I will buy the insecticide first!

Birds:

We had a green woodpecker on the damson tree in the garden; almost enough to make me want to keep it…

But then when you think why the woodpecker was so keen (the middle of the tree is rotten & has become an ants’ nest), I still haven’t changed my mind.

M. Lorin says he will come and chop it down in the winter – he doesn’t want to damage too many of my plants, which is sweet of him.

I saw a flight of partridges (well, I think they were) the other day when I went for a walk.

This was prior to the start of the shooting season, mind you!

3 blind mice:

One evening I was enchanted/infuriated by three baby mice (let’s face it, they probably weren’t blind) nervously skittering out from behind a box on the floor.

I’m terribly squeamish about killing things (flies, mosquitoes, slugs & snails I’ve managed to make an exception for, but it took years for me to stop feeling guilty about killing them), so despite their lack of awareness, I didn’t stamp on them…

Next morning when M. Boyer and his daughter (who speaks very good English and came along to translate where necessary) were sitting in the kitchen, I wished I had squished the little buggers…

Completely gone was any timidity – they were scampering across the floor: from the fridge to the shower, round the table, to the front door, back to the table, round M. Boyer’s feet!

My French is nowhere near good enough to say: “I’m really sorry/massively embarrassed by this. I wish I could stamp on the little blighters, but I can’t! No, they are too light for the mousetraps to kill them – see where they have eaten the apricots without setting off the trap?”

We’ve tried poison, but very little interest in that… And I’ve only had an “odd” smell a couple of times… So I think that’s more likely down to natural wastage than the poison working.

Have bought a couple of rattraps, but suspect it’s dormice/garden dormice that we’ve got rather than rats…

Oh, and shrews don’t eat apricots!

The traps have been completely ignored every time my unwelcome visitor has been a shrew…

I don’t know whether they eat walnuts or not…

There was sustained (and irritating) rustling yesterday – enough to stop what I was doing & try and find (and eject) the culprit.

Usually when I get up & go towards the noise that is the signal for silence. This time, however, the shrew in the bag of walnuts wasn’t paying attention! I couldn’t face the prospect of this noise going on until the shrew got bored, so I grabbed the bag and shook it.

I hate killing things I don’t have to (as I’ve mentioned), but that was going to drive me potty! I couldn’t then cope with the thought of a decaying body (however small) in the bag of walnuts, so I had to find it & remove it…

Only I hadn’t killed the shrew, he was still in the bag I was emptying to try and find his corpse!

Tub-trugs are wonderful! I was down to the last few walnuts into the third trug, when the shrew popped out.

Knowing (from experience) that small rodents have sharp teeth, I caught him in my Pyrex jug – and dropped him into the last trug (no chance of him climbing the sides & escaping.

He was re-homed in my pile of rotting wood – plenty of nice insects there to eat, hopefully!