Photos??

I found these photos saved as a draft post - not quite sure why, or even if I ever posted them...

But seeing them here reminded me that we no longer [mostly] have animals just coming into the house!

The froglet and shrew both came in when we were between phases of renovation work, and both got evicted to somewhere where they (hopefully) wouldn't come back into the house.

Not that I have a problem about (nice) creatures paying the occasional visit, but they can end up dying as they forget how to get out/can't get out because they entered whilst a door or window was open.

Sadly, it's not been the end of critter ingress [although it's better now we've blocked up various of the larger holes upstairs ("larch-lap" wall & mdf over the hole in a window)]; I went to light the fire last time we were at the house [all the rain made it so damp; most people had theirs going, too], and there was a dead bat in there.

He must have dropped down the chimney (?) and couldn't get out.  I was really sad and felt immensely guilty, but there was nothing I could do.  I didn't even want to take a photo of him.

I also found a dead shrew, but that was outside in the potager, so he either died or natural causes or was owl prey & got dropped?  I didn't feel guilt over him.

I'd just rather all the animals stayed alive and outside!

Nasty-looking fungus...

We went into the large cellar to find the painting stuff [for "Brookside"; it needs totally re-decorating, preferably before we move in], and the pallet the boxes were on was infested with a horrible-looking fungus.

We took everything out of the cellar that had been on the pallet [upstairs I treated the floor with Cuprinol 5-Star, so I'm hopeful that it will all be OK; none of the plastic boxes seemed to have any fungus on them].

We moved the pallet to the garden and are leaving it there till we decide what to do [it looks just like images of dry rot fungus, so I wanted it out of the cellar].

The cellar is completely stone, and the floor above it is concrete and tile, so I'm hopeful it will just be a local infection, and won't spread to the rest of the house.

It's been so wet this summer, it's amazing that all the pallets down there aren't the same, and that we have no other instances about the place.

It's a definite 'fingers crossed' event...

We have the cellar as well-ventilated as possible, but with the ground like a giant puddle so much of the time, there's only so much we can do.