Not all visitors are welcome

 

The very last thing I do every night is put Pav out for a final pee*.  When this happens EVEN LATER THAN USUAL because, say, I’ve been reading something and HAD TO KNOW HOW IT ENDED**, it may no longer be awfully dark outdoors by the time we get out there for this ritual moment.   Hey, it’s barely a month to the longest day, it gets light really really REALLY early, okay?  So it was like twilight out there this morning, and I was standing there in my nightgown ready to fend the little varmint*** off the rose bushes and my peripheral vision was caught by movement where no movement should be. . . .

There was a big fat mouse lowering the bird-seed level in the feeder by a rate of knots.  ARRRRRRRGH.†

This is my fabulous squirrel proof bird feeder, you know?  The one with the integral cage that only little birds can get through.  Little birds and the occasional frelling mouse—who was soon going to be too frelling bulgy to get out again.  I picked up a stake that didn’t happen to be propping anything important and gave the feeder a move-or-die whack.  Mouse leaped out into the shadows—Geronimoooooooooo!—and disappeared.††

The real ratbag about this is that I’ve pretty much decided that the birds don’t like this feeder.  I have lots of birds in the garden, and the suet block in the other feeder is eaten down pretty reliably.  Er.  By birds:  I see them doing it.  This one—nope.  I assume they don’t like the cage.

Sigh.

So today, which was a lovely day†††, I spent a good bit of in the garden. ‡ And one of the things I did was tie the clematis and the rose-bush that are the likeliest mouse-access-providing culprits away from the seed feeder.

And my little apple tree is blossoming like CRAZY! YAAAAAAAAAAY! I won’t actually stop worrying about what wall-building may have done to its roots till it’s had this year’s crop of apples and blossomed again next year . . . but so far so good.

* * *

* Hellhounds scorn such wimpery.  Pav is extremely continent^ but she’s also always delighted to be allowed to burst out of her crate and attack something.  If the price for this indulgence is that she stop attacking things^^ long enough to have a pee, she will do that with reasonable grace.

^ Barring the standard canine disasters.  My latest trial is that she’s decided that sheep crap is a delicacy.  ARRRRRRRRGH.  Even if I hold her upside down and shake, the stuff is kind of friable, you know?  It doesn’t all hold together neatly and pop out in a nice cohesive lump.

^^ Dirty laundry, nightgown hems+, feet, towels hanging on the Aga rail, etc.  If she’s desperate, dog toys.

+ She has, relatively recently, discovered the joys of rocket-launching her solid little furry self upward inside the circle of hem of the nightgown you’re wearing YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

** I’ll tell you all about it.  Some day.

*** With the little glistening varminty eyes

† Speaking of ARRRRRRRRGH.  ARRRRRRRRRGH.

†† Pav was sure she’d missed something.  I’m glad to say the mouse leaped into the shadows on the far side of the little courtyard fence.  I don’t like mice, but I didn’t in the least want my hellterror catching one.^  Or diving through a rose-bush to try.

^ Either she’d eat it—and its unknown but guaranteed undesirable parasites—or she’d just mangle it a little.  They scream, you know.  Like bunnies.  Bunnies scream.  Dog owners need to know how to kill things.  Whimper.

††† After we got down to a NEAR FROST last night.  One of my pathetic and ridiculous excuses for staying up reading was so that I could keep an eye on the frelling thermometer.  The temperature had turned around and was going up again by the time I turned the light off.  I get to do this again tonight.  Or not, of course.

‡ Have I told you I have two lots of American visitors coming next week?  I have maybe half a dozen overnight-staying, pond-crossing visitors in an average year . . . and I have THREE of them NEXT WEEK?  WHAT?  One of them is an old friend, and if the house(s) is a tip and the garden(s) is a jungle, eh, she’s seen it all before.  The other one—and her husband—I’m a little afraid of.  Sigh.  But nothing is going to turn me into a magnificent housekeeper, a sublime gardener and a superlative hostess in the next ten days, so we’ll just have to muddle along somehow.