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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Animal Party

[4 minute read ] 

(slightly graphic content in the second full paragraph - brief allusion to torture)

The badgers and the Muntjac deer had a party in my garden last night. There were plant pots scattered over a wide area. If these creatures had opposable thumbs I am sure I might have found a few half-smoked joints among the yellow grass. The temperature overnight gets as low as 14^oC, where I live. A good time to throw your body around in time with nature's beat. 

       'Hey Babe! Wanna dance?'

       'Forget it, Buck! We are two different species!'

None of the usual slugs and snails were there so none of the four-legged animals got sludge between their toes or over their freshly shined hooves. Actually, all the badger girls were safe from the Muntjac bucks because deer wait until autumn before they start their hunt for a partner. It is then that their awful bark rings out. Females (Does) also similarly bark. There is a Muntjac that lives in the undergrowth just beyond my back garden fence in a neighbouring pasture. Muntjac barking, to me, sounds like the agonised screams that humans having their skin pulled off might sound like. It really terrifies me.

On occasion, I have been camping in autumn. years ago, when I was awakened and first heard the muntjac bark I ran away from my tent into the the nearby village square; from my  tent, through a dark spinney, along an even darker tree-lined lane thronged by more trees, and finally into the light of old-fashioned street lamps where thatched cottages had been for generations. It was probably a full mile of hearing the 'tortured humans' in the dark woods and fields behind me. I stayed awake the rest of the night, cold under the clock in the village square. Dawn brought me back to some sense of reason and that awful ragged buzzing feeling of poor or no sleep. 

I have hitch-hiked across Europe and slept on frozen snow in minus 10^oC in France with no kip-mat or anything under me and not cared if I froze to death because I was so tired. I have had hypothermia and hitch-hiked the wrong way as a consequence; and threw away expensive stuff to lighten my load, even pens and pencils, but kept heavy books. Nothing makes sense with hypothermia. I have slept in forests that I know have wolves in them and expected to wake and find a wolf breathing into my face. I have remained seated and not turned around when a knife fight broke out behind me outside a Greek restaurant, while my companions all leapt up and ran a distance away. I was only irritated that I had to shout for them to be able to hear the end of my story. I have climbed cliffs freestyle and had to reverse my journey back down; a much, much harder feat that takes three times as long to move the same distance. I have taught myself to sail, with no engine, in the rapid tidal waters of the twin River Medway and Thames estuaries, even sailing near to the sunken liberty ship SS Richard Montgomery that is so dangerous with its WWII explosives still leaching away that it might spontaneously explode. I have been visited by aliens and spirits in dreams and I am fairly sure in real life. But I have never been more terrified than when I first heard that Muntjac deer for the first time in the 'dead' of night. Go on YouTube to hear one.

If there was such a body as the Society for the Protection of Cellar Spiders, it would be annoyed with me. I used to have quite a collection of them scattered around my home. These harmless and seemingly dead spiders, due to their stationary positions, when they do move are quite simply the most graceful creatures I have ever been fortunate to witness. They move incredibly slowly and it seems they place one leg gently down and then think which leg to move next and carefully lift it and move it forward. If any creature reminds me of ballerinas, it is this spider. The reason SPOC, if it existed, would be livid with me is because by leaving windows open overnight I have let Garden Spiders in. Garden spiders are fast predators and meditative spiders stand no chance against them. They are eaten before they have finished a single phrase of their mantras. There are now no cellar spiders on my ceilings. I am really quite disappointed. I am not sure why though, because I have only ever seen one move, so they don't provide me with much entertainment. 

I think the housefly that has lived with me for the past five years has finally died. I have used about six cans of fly-killer during that time and it survived them all, even if the moths, driven crazy by the added flowery smell did not. I know my tongue has suffered from exposure to the active ingredient permithrin. I have to say I don't miss the affections of the housefly. Briefly touching my lower legs is just too intimate for my liking.

Sally's cat that lives next door is still wary of me and won't let me near it. It did, however, blink at me three times yesterday to say I recognise you are stronger than me. It might have meant 'Hi!' though. Because I keep my reading glasses on outside (they are a really low prescription level) I can out-stare any cat; they all think the glasses are the edges of my eyes; which means, to them, I am the dominant creature out of the two of us. I also have to be mindful that whenever I come across curious dogs being walked by their pack leader that I do not look directly at them when I hold my hand out to be smelt, because I wear the same reading glasses wider afield in my village, recently finding long sticks for my garden.

I keep forgetting to look out for the bats that should be flying outside my home. Perhaps there are no flying insects for them anyway. I am fearful that my neighbours will think I am a weirdo if I just hang around and stare out my front door. Once they start hurrying past the damage is already done. I would need to run after them down the road to tell them I am okay.

        'Wait! Come back! I am not weird. Come back! Stop running! Wait!'

There is no other way out of my road than past my home. I think it might be prudent to have someone with a starting pistol further up the road if I wait outside to see the bats. I might have to disguise myself as bags of rubbish or get in a big cardboard box so the neighbours can't see me, just to see the bats. I really don't want the neighbours to know I am in a big box or pretending to be a pile of rubbish.

I'm not weird. Honest!