The Rural Idyll

The cats have discovered the joys of the summer moth-hunt, and can be hard to persuade indoors at bedtime. They have also discovered their good fortune in coming to live with a family which keeps its car parked off the road in the back yard - a perfect hidey-hole if you don't want to be caught at bedtime.

When I went the other night to get them in, they were both under there, making friends with a high-pitched squeak of some sort. At least I thought they were making friends. Turned out they were bullying it. After I'd grabbed amenable Aineko and taken her indoors, I had a better look at the more elusive Oscar and found he was messing about with a somewhat disabled shrew, which was too weak to escape. No way was Oscar going to let me catch him. He knows exactly how wide the car is and how far under it I can reach.

On my knees on the cobbles I peered under the car and watched as he picked up the shrew in his mouth, walked a few steps with it danging from his jaws, dropped it again, prodded it a bit, and picked it up again. It squeaked piteously. "It's Nature's Way," I thought, quoting those couthy Sunday Post wildlife articles of long ago. "It's the Law of the Jungle", I told myself, as images of Shere Khan padded through my imagination.

"Leave the poor wee thing alone, Oscar!" I cried, not really expecting him to comply.

Well, if I couldn't grab the cat, perhaps I could grab the shrew. It was too damaged and bemused to run very fast. All I had to do was wait until the next time Oscar dropped it within my reach. An opportunity soon presented itself: I stretched in under the car and soon the soft little animal was in my hand....

Ow! They've got sharp teeth, these wee buggers! Fixed in a death grip to my third finger the rodent hung on fiercely as I stood up, yelling and shaking my hand, trying to make it come loose. I ran across the cobbles to the grass and shook it furiously off, where it lay panting and unable to do more than crawl for safety. "Ungrateful so-and-so! I was trying to rescue you, and this is the thanks you give me!"

So, there I was, standing stupidly in the middle of my garden at midnight shouting at a half-chewed shrew. Inevitably, I was spotted. Within seconds an angry seagull came swooping down off the chimney stack, screeching and screaming at me. Within a few more seconds I was back in the house, ducking for cover.

Oscar, totally laid-back, stayed under the car, looking slightly bewildered at his lost playmate but otherwise quite unperturbed.

Yes, eventually we did get him inside, but by this time I was kitted out in my safety garb with a big hat and a long-handled hoe. The seagull returned to its outpost grinning maliciously, daring me to go out again.