F’s been growling; real GRRRRRRRR sort of growling – at me!!. I think she is trying to give the impression
of being cross. I am meant to take away
the message that I’m seriously, deeply in trouble. Would you put up with this from your staff?
A pair of robins that claim my back yard as their territory
have built a nest in our woodpile. F
discovered its existence at about the same time as I did. It was hard to miss; two adult robins were
doing shuttle service between the fat pellets in the bird feeder and a hole in
the stack near the top of the wood pile.
Humans go all soft and sentimental about things like that, watching
from a distance and putting out extra fat pellets and even going out to buy some
dried mealworms. I, on the other hand, just think of it as a convenient way of
turning fat pellets and mealworms (which are essentially unappealing) into a
form of cat-food that is appealing.
I am quite proud of my skills as a predator. I usually deposit all or part of each ‘kill’
on the door mat so that my humans can admire it. So I left the baby robin on the doormat, like
all the headless mice and miscellaneous other trophies before it, and that is
when the trouble started. I can’t go
near the woodpile without being swooped on and carried away. Queue lots of that growling noise.
Mr B and F nailed some sort of plastic cardboard over the
front of the woodshed and cut a hole for the robins. The next time I got a sneaky chance to size
it up I reckoned I could leap up far enough to grab that hole and haul myself
inside, but the robins do their own line in loud shouting noise and that brought
F swooping down on me again.
Next thing I know the front of the woodshed has been further
fortified with wire netting usually employed to keep pigeons off the cabbages
at the allotment. None of this seems to
have fazed the robins in the least; they appear to almost enjoy it. The shuttle service continues unabated. It’s a torment.
During Sunday night I got my own back on F by digging up the
whole tray of celeriac seedlings she had been nurturing for weeks just inside
the big glass doors of the dining room.
That might have been a step too far.
I had to spend Monday morning grovelling while she tried to retrieve
tiny plants from the mess and replant them into plug trays. I never dig indoors. I shun litter trays. So she knew I was just being destructive. I even spent the later part of Monday morning
grovelling in the cold draughty plastic greenhouse while she did other plant
stuff (more tiny seedlings), but as that is right beside the woodpile, it was
only more torment ................and more growling.
My humans will go back to work on Tuesday and I will have
more time, uninterrupted, to study the recent fortifications of the woodpile. I am not easily discouraged, and F can growl
all she likes but once I have caught all the robins she can’t put them back
again like replanting celeriac seedlings.
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