Been pondering – it’s a fair bet that one day I’ll no longer work in Leeds, and then what do I call these missives? The rather tacky Letters from Life would enable me to keep the initial letters, but is just too cheesy, even for me. I’m sure something will come to me.
Anyway, got a rabbit update.. was watching Man on Fire this evening, when there’s a BANG BANG BANG at the door. I rush to see what the emergency is, and a young lady with baby on hip is standing there.
“Sorry to disturb you,” she says. “But there’s an escaped rabbit on next door’s front lawn and we wondered if you knew who the owner is so you could let them know?”
So I explain to increasingly wide-eyed lassie that it’s a feral rabbit that’s been on the scene for probably 5 or 6 weeks now. She explains she lives around the corner, and her babe was making a fuss, so she was taking it out for a walk. I explain we quite like seeing said lapine, she wondered if it ate our flowers. She carried on her walk, I went back to the film.
Although this is not the only wildlife excitement we’ve had today. At about 4 ‘o’ clock, we were lounging in the sitting room watching Live 8, and A. squeals and points out the window. Lo and behold, there’s a tiny hedgehog snuffling across our patio!!!
We both thought that they were essentially nocturnal, so wondered why it was out in the heat of the day; although it was a very little one (it would have comfortably sat in the palm of my hand, at least as far as its size went), so may have been a lost baby hedgehog. Ben was very excited, but hedgehogs are not only prickly they are also flea-ridden, so in this instance we didn’t let him out of the patio doors.
It snuffled into our flowerbed, and we didn’t really see it again; chances are it nipped under the fence and through to next door. H’mm – actually next door also had the rabbit on her lawn this evening, must be a veritable wildlife haven.
I can barely remember the last time I saw a hedgehog in the flesh, it’s just a shame it didn’t linger. Perhaps we’ll put out a saucer of milk…