To my lovely blog readers,
In case you have been wondering what's been going on [like this squirrel] and are tearing your hair out at the lack of updates from the garden of all crazy wildlife - sincere apologies for I am currently [as of 5 minutes ago] deep in the world of academic - i.e. trying to make sense of all the surveys I did and trying to tie them [kicking and screaming] to fit the research questions I've asked of them. I've set about 7 mini deadlines between now and the 6th of december [hand in date] so unfortunately everything is falling by the wayside, as all word counts must go elsewhere.
Normal service will resume in December [unless I've used up all capacity for writing/spelling and the like...].
Some interesting things have happened this week however:
Bramble harvest is amazing - squirrels care not for fruit here...or at least not yet
Found a cache of Leopard slugs under my cucumber pot - these guys are super cool and are definitely the good guys! They will predate other slugs and only eat already dead/decaying plant matter, so won't go for your seedlings/prize marrow/[insert other plant of extreme personal value here]. Plus you can openly say "I saw a leopard in the back garden yesterday!" and the like. Probably becomes less effective if you say you saw it hiding under a pot plant, but I'll leave the semantics up to you.
In the process of taking down the tomato plants [huge harvest btw, although not super difficult considering up until now the maximum I've managed to grow is about 3] I encountered the leopard slugs [and loads of big black slugs [the big orange/red ones] and a weird little tunnel dug/scraped out under our wee plastic 'greenhouse'. Clearly been used by a mouse, and connected to a tunnel going through the lawn grass. Yes the lawn is sufficiently tussock-y that there is a permenant thatch or under coat. Maybe I should try one of those dog brushes...you know the ones. ANYWAY. Right next to this wee tunnel was a weird little white line [for want of a better descriptive word]? Turned out [obviously] to be a nearly complete spine...and after further poking I found the skull to match [again, a mouse]. Super weird.
Naturally I collected all the bones I could find, placed them in a small container and left them on the counter-top, thoroughly perplexing M [when he found them later].
On that note, I bid you goodnight and wish you many a happy wildlife adventure
[although possibly not during the nighttime, unless that's your thing]!
Until next time!
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