Air-raid Shelter

It’s not funny.  Really, it isn’t funny, and I blame the cat biscuits they throw on the lawn.  That blackbird has been eating the cat biscuits and it thinks it’s an eagle or something.  Whenever I go into the garden it appears from somewhere and shouts abuse.  If I keep looking at it and do my best ‘I’m-ready-to-spring-at-you-crouch’ I’m relatively safe, but if I turn my back for even a second it swoops on me.  It’s dangerous.  It doesn’t seem big enough, but it behaves like it’s going to carry me off – so maybe it could!

The trouble is that the garden is so big it’s not possible to beat a dignified retreat.  At some stage I have to turn and run.  Then It comes swooping in like a speeding low-level bomber. 

I beat it to the house last night; fortunately the patio doors were open and I could streak straight inside.  It knew better than to follow me in, but it had to pull up sharply to avoid flying straight into the back wall of the house. Then it sits on the patio pot-plants right outside the French doors and bawls its abuse through the windows.  It’s right there, just feet away, shouting the odds.

Sometimes I sit under the wooden table on the patio while it sits on the strawberry baskets by the clothesline.  It tries to fly at me through the gaps between the table and seats, but it knows better than to get right into the small space under the table with me: it can’t carry me off from there and I just might win that battle.  We have lots of confrontations like that and I’m getting a bit fed up with it.  There is no peace in my own garden any more, I can’t even go out and enjoy my weed and the weed is getting almost too big to roll in now.

My armoury has been enhanced however.  Mr B leaned the sportscar upside down on the seat beside the table (so water wouldn’t puddle in it) and I have discovered it’s a good place to retreat to.  Mr B calls it the ‘air raid shelter’.  Actually it makes quite a good air raid shelter either way up.  I tried it at the allotment and it works there too.

Air raid shelter

(Secretary: We’ve discovered this ‘eagle’ actually goes inside the neighbours houses demanding to be fed….. that’s one bold bird.  And as for that ‘streak’ into the house……think grey, furry, Exocet missile!)