the animal hotel

When I was a child I created an animal hotel in the old chicken house down in the pit at the bottom of the garden. This was my domain - my parents had no idea what I was doing down there - I could have been keeping a baboon for all they knew. As it was I had a couple of mice (later rather a lot of mice as they were not of the same sex) and a few stick insects. And a snail.

It crossed my mind now, as I was cleaning out the crow with white feathers and putting in a fresh towel at the bottom of his house, that not much has changed. As I tucked the towel in I found myself saying "there we are clean sheets." Indeed - Not much has changed. 

Above are the three amigos - two crows and a jackdaw who have palled up with each other in the shade tunnel. I've taught them to feed themselves, to fly and soon they'll be off after the naughty magpie who left last week without paying his bill. The crow with the white feathers which came from the wildlife hospital like all the others looks very like a magpie - for some reason most of his wing feathers are white. Hopefully when he grows new ones they'll be black - otherwise out in the wild sadly he will be attacked for being odd. This could happen to any of us at any time.

Actually if you walked into the porch of our house you'd think I was running a subsidiary to Boots the chemist. Scout the dog (above right) takes three different sorts of pills and sometimes a fourth each day and Harry the horse is on drugs. Every day I crush twenty paracetamol and give them for his sore leg and I have hundreds of packets. Shops will only sell you two packs at a time which only does the day so every time I go into a shop I pick up a couple of packets. I think the village shop are growing suspicious and I'll have to wear a wig or a false beard next time I go in. Someone told me they thought they'd seen Harry smoking a joint behind the bike shed which is ridiculous. There isn't a bike shed.

I love it when there are babies at the hospital - here's one rolling over to give itself a good lick.

And dear three pills a day Scout wearing her crown of leaves

I have purposely left a strip of grass in the lawn to encourage wild life which you can see has worked very well.

Pocket said he'd been busy writing television series. Oh really? I asked -what are they then? He told me he'd written something called Holby Kitty. Don't you mean Holby City set in a hospital? No he glared at me it's about cats in a hospital. Anything else? I asked. He looked a bit shifty and said Downton Tabby.

You mean Downton Abbey and you nicked that from a cartoon on facebook. He told me he wasn't saying any more until he had a solicitor present or better still a barista. Don't you mean a barrister I said.  No he snapped. I want a coffee with cream without the coffee.

I have over 78 different varieties of roses in the garden - and here is one of them - the beautiful climber Awakening. When we first moved into the cottage all those years ago the garden was just part of a field and over the years I've collected all these roses - some of which I can't distinguish from each other. A lot of the pink ones although they have different names look remarkably similar. Still, I'm not expecting to do an open garden and have people quiz me on them.

 

Our neighbourhood runs ads for help in the community. I have strung some of them together and not changed any of the wording.

Help Page

Dementia man missing.

My father broke out of the house

during the night.

Please can you check your gardens.

Has anyone lost a sheep?

Dog found.

Wanted a ladies bicycle.

I need a piano removed.

I am looking for someone to strim my edges.

Found - a key in the roadside.

Plumber wanted to fit W.C.

Has anyone picked up £30 this morning?

The window cleaner has just announced

he's no longer cleaning windows.

Missing - heavily pregnant Jack Russell.

Do you want a bungalow?

 

one for sorrow

I have been given a baby magpie that needs to be hand fed as it is so young.

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.

She is quite needy as you can see. I have called her Joy.

There has been sorrow though. The rook that had been found down the rabbit hole (last post) that I resisted calling Alice - I named Percy Button. Don't ask me why - I think it had something to do with haberdashery - the cat Pocket being called pocket. I seldom name the rescue birds for attachment reasons. For two months I bathed his closed eye every day and gradually he began walking around but was never able to fly. We all hoped that given time he would be able to because what life is it to be a wild bird that should fly who has to remain in captivity. Then one day for no apparent reason he began to die. He could no longer hobble around but kept falling on his side. I would help him up and he would take a drink of water and even a morsel of cheese (his favourite food) but as the day wore on he grew weaker and finally at five o'clock in the afternoon he died. Sadly and oddly he looked at me and his closed eye had opened, appearing as bright and shiny as the other. Then he closed them both.

Rocket was so sad he had to go to bed.

And here, where Percy Button's inside house was (he had an outdoors house too) is a vase of flowers in his memory. Scout  is honouring his memory and you can just see the triangular ear of Pocket like he's in some kind of Jaws scenario at the bottom of the picture. He is just checking that Percy Button isn't hidden round the back of the vase.

Not all rescues end sadly though. The lovely fox I put up on my blog post the time before last who'd had a fight with another male and come off worst was eventually returned to his territory. He came from Bournemouth and was a much loved urban fox. On his return all the locals who had fed him and his families over the years lined the street to cheer him back. He immediately leapt onto the seat of a parked motorbike, triumphant that he had returned to his patch as if he were James Dean in a Rebel without a Cause.

I couldn't resist this photo opportunity of Nancy( my familiar). We had friends stay with us once who had a funny little dog who barked madly at the Black Cat sign but completely ignored Nancy in the flesh.

Pocket says he's exhausted writing all his books, plays and poems.(what poems?) He told me his latest novel had been adapted for television and called The Purrrrrrsuit of Love. I said I thought Nancy Mitford had written that and when did he get himself an agent? He shut his eyes and told me he was opening his own literary agency called The Pocket Book Agency. He ignored me when I suggested I might join it but said in memory of Percy Button he might produce one called The Pocketbook of Birds. I told him that had already been done ........

ahhh - the joy of the sweet peas - now flowering in the poly tunnel

and this beautiful tree peony in the garden.

 “Hope” is the thing with feathers 

BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.