With glorious Spring sunshine our doors are open and the Tribe are spending as much time as possible outside. This morning the Eldest yelled that there was a bird in the house. Yup, Spring has definitely arrived. Our biggest cat had managed to catch a tiny blue tit but the tit had somehow managed to escape from his clutches and flown through the house ending up on the window ledge in the playroom (funnily enough behind a pile of soft toy birds; a hummingbird, macau, tawny owl and kestrel). Using a clean teatowel I gently put it over the terrified bird to stop it damaging its wings and carried it back outside. Opening the towel, the bird flew straight up into the birch tree. No harm done.
Later the Eldest decided to make some shortbread and was clearing up so that I could start on supper when one of the cats suddenly appeared and dropped something under the table. It then ran under the Littlest’s desk. Great, a mouse or is it a rat?? Not wanting it to disappear behind the cupboards we tried to keep it under the desk and keep the cat away. Enter ‘Gerald Durrell’ to rescue the rodent. A rather ridiculous chase ensued culminating in said rodent sinking its teeth into ‘Gerald Durrell’s’ finger. It was still attached as she raised her finger and rodent off the floor. Only when she started screaming did I realise that now was not the time to laugh; it was just rather reminiscent of a tiny crab attached to a finger on a deserted beach in Oman. The rodent fell to the floor and as ‘Gerald Durrell’ clutched her bleeding finger I managed to get the poor creature into a container to take outside. I’m a great believer in most things getting fixed by themselves but given that I wasn’t quite sure what it was and I guess that some animals can carry some diseases (all animal bites carry a huge amount of bacteria apparently – I did do a quick Google!), I decided that an A&E trip was inevitable. Fortunately our A&E is 5 minutes away at Andover War Memorial Hospital – it’s fabulously efficient and pretty quick. Dropping the Eldest, the Boy and the Littlest to go and feed the lambs, we were in the waiting room pretty quickly. The nurse assured us that as all jabs were up to date (tetanus being the most important) she’d be fine.
Back home and normality returns.
