A 2016 Allotment link about neighbours and stuff....
If you are of a sensitive disposition, stop reading right here.
A headless dead rat appeared on our allotment this week. There is was all fur and legs and tail and stuff - and a blank where the head should be.
Strange.
Why would a predator go to all the trouble of catching a rat and then only eat the crunchy bit on one end?
The fur was very pretty; longer than we would have expected on a rat. It got removed to a 'less developed' allotment garden and had disappeared the next time we went there.
Meanwhile those refugee slow worms that F put into her compost Daleks, seem to be happy to set up home in the new spaces. There are always some on top when we open the bins to add more cooch roots. No normal person would compost cooch root, and we aren't really either - just building on to the slow worm condominium and closing the lid on them again. Our real compost is simply laid in trenches in the garden and filled in and planted over. That seems to do the job without a big bin taking up a precious corner of our growing space.
I've never made compost, just tossed and dug in food wastes. The worms and weather do a great job of breaking it down. I used to have a terrier mix who caught field rats, bit off the heads and brought home the bodies. It was more a trophy than food, I think.
ReplyDeleteIn autumn we produce a couple of cubic metres of the stuff (corn stalks, pumpkin vines, shredded hedge clippings, old tomato plants, kale stalks etc - sometimes it is a bit much too just throw down, so it will be interesting to see whether we can make it work not having a compost heap as such. We might need a better shredding system and then simply use it as winter mulch on the bits that don't have over-wintering vegetables.
DeletePS we bet you loved finding headless rats on your door mat.
DeleteGail says: Unfortunately I don't have too much difficulty imagining Nobby decapitating a rat and then happily crunching away on the head...
ReplyDeleteThat sent a shudder across the desk....
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteCrikey - is that the Havant version of the Headless Crocodile? In other news, I should be on wheels by the weekend. We can trade donkey news then... hugs and whiskeries, YAM-aunty xxx
We can be pretty certain that Gail can't imagine Nobby taking on a croc (especially a salty). Mr T is beginning to express Donkey envy told about Yam-Aunty's new 'wheels'. xxx Mr T and F
DeleteOur place is all cooch. It’s been the ban of my existence since the day i moved in 35 years ago!
ReplyDeleteWhich is why I went raised beds for vegetable gardens. Although the cooch has grown into them as well. Luckily only at the sides. A dead rat is better than a live one anytime I say
No photographic evidence? I was intrigued by the 'pretty fur' being longer than expected . . .
ReplyDeleteF is a bit of a dinosaur - she doesn't carry a phone around with her at all times. That is not a conscious decision - she just forgets to take it along with her. Yeah - in our experience rats are brownish or greyish - this one had fur that was different colours from its skin to the end of each fur (like Tigger's), and it seemed to be about the length of rabbit fur. (It was definitely a rat - we checked the tail.) Maybe all rats are like that - we have never studied them all that closely before.
Deletewhat a great idea to place the compost in the ground and plant in it. it is a mystery how the head disapeared. and now the whole thing. must be a hunter that got interupted before he could finish his meal. could have been an owl like ours, seems they love mice/rats. we know it was not a CAT. MOL
ReplyDelete