Be Careful What You Ask For....

Darrell claims I'd been wailing and gnashing my teeth too much about all the recently hunted squirrels and chipmunks, and kept asking what was wrong with mice and bunnies...





This was the only picture I managed to get after Darrell rescued a shrieking baby bunny from Charv, who actually lost interest amazingly quickly. I watched him for a few minutes then dashed for the camera, to catch the one image, before he fumbled his way off into the unknown.
Good luck, baby bunny.
I apologize for my savage beasts.

Anti V

Night Of A Thousand Screams

Okay, maybe not quite that many, but it was not an undisturbed sleep last night.

At some point during the day, one of our cats, probably Bear, snuck a chipmunk into the house. Most probably he meant it as a gift for me. Bear tends to bring me home pets. It’s his style. Different from the other cats.
And often I do tend to be receptive. (Like I prefer them alive, to –ex-. Though that catching and releasing part can be somewhat ‘exciting’.)

A couple of years ago, Charv, the main male, discovered rabbits. And we had a season of many many rabbit snacks. They ranged from adorable baby bunnies, to bunnies as large as his sister. That season, a dozen.
The next year, two dozen.

Admittedly, the rabbits are not the benign storybook creatures we’d like to think them. In winter, they eat my trees. Seriously. One year they ate my rowan tree down to a stick. I was taking out the compost, in snowshoes, and asked myself, why was there a stick standing up in my yard? Then I realized it used to be a tree!

So, while I lament the sweetness of the now-demised bunnies, and was totally willing to work to capture and free any Bear-brought bunnies, I could also school myself to accept it as some form of natural order.

But this season, even though there were bunny prints in the winter, and some nibbling on the apple trees, our cats seem to have switched to squirrels and chipmunks. Sigh. And not the brightest of prey, no matter what you think of them.

It breaks my heart, because I love the squirrels and chipmunks. In winter, we have a maximum of two squirrels. So I don’t grudge them a go at my bird feeder. They’re amusing, and do NOT seriously impact on my birds’ noshing.
And chipmunks are simply adorable. Unbelievably stupid, perhaps, but adorable.

However, they don’t even try to avoid their fate.

So, it was no surprise (perhaps) to be awakened by the shrieking of chippies in the night. Darrell did make a valiant effort to capture it, but there’s only so much you can do at three in the morning, naked, near-sighted, and armed only with a silk blouse to scoop it up in.
So, propping the door to the workshop open, we abandoned it to its fate.

There was more shrilling and shrieking, and thumping and thrashing, but when morning finally got here, there were no chippie bits, and both male cats had set themselves free….probably chasing chippie off into the night.
So, I suppose it was worth it, even though I woke up again really wanting a drink of water, but not daring to go look for one, in case I encountered an ex-chippie with my bare foot.

But I do wish they could find themselves quieter hobbies.

Anti-v

Triffids on the move....

Weird.
I'm making masks for the theatre, and in the hour and a half since I set this most recent one outside to dry, the hops have snuck a sneaky tendril around it!

Hoya

My mother brought home a snippet of a hoya plant, from somewhere, when she was much younger. She got it to root, and maintained it as a plant throughout life. Over the years, both my sister and I have had our own snippets. I have no idea how green a thumb my sister has, wouldn't surprise me if it was kelly green! I've had a number of attempts in varying stages of my life, which have usually eventually died.
It wasn't till I was visiting my sister a few years ago, and saw her lush happy hoya in bloom, that I even knew it was a flowering plant!
That may have been the trip that I begged yet another cutting of the hoya, and dragged the poor thing back across the country with me.
Now, my thumb may be no greener at all, but at least that clipping rooted and was potted, and is still with me. It hasn't really grown a huge amount, considering I've been babying it for several years, But lo! and Behold! it has flowered. For three years in a row!
One flower each year, in exactly the same spot on the stem.

It's an amazingly exotic flower too. And night-scented with an overpowering perfume. It begins secretively with tiny nubbins that eventually grow into little stalks, and then into little leathery pin cushions, and finally, burst into velvet flocked stars.

But I'm always trying to get photographs of this fascinating occurrence. Here are this year's offerings.