Well, after an uneasy truce with the neighbourhood cats, things had once again started to get out of hand. Apart from the usual food theft, a nest box full of great tits narrowly escaped a massacre, the ‘cat from hell’ has once again been taking swipes at the hogs and the poor wood mice hunted to the brink of extinction…time for some creative ‘cat proofing’. The hedgehog access holes in the fences have been made smaller and hubby and I have been busy building feeding station mark 3 out of wood. The ‘cat from hell’ was caught on camera trying to squeeze through one of the smaller holes in the fence, but just couldn’t quite manage it. Ha! Ha! Ha! So the new feeding station has got the same sized access holes with a baffle at either end to make doubly sure the cats are kept out! Our hogs have never been that keen on the old feeding station and prefer to eat out in the open; I suspect it may be because there was only one way in and out and being trapped in there with a much larger bully couldn’t have been much fun. Hopefully with an exit at either end they will make more use of this one and be able to make a quick getaway if need be.
The hedgehogs might be behaving themselves at the moment (although their slug management skills are appalling!) but we are now under siege from demented squirrels! In a misguided attempt to stop the squirrels destroying the new bird feeders, I thought it would be a good idea to get them one of their own after I spotted them in a local garden centre. A large squirrel soon fathomed out how to open the lid and proceeded burying its contents all around the garden, including making good use of one of the hedgehog holes and burying them all over our next door neighbours garden too. One week later and no corner of our garden has remained unturned, every plant pot and every crevice now contains a peanut. So if I thought that all the holes in the lawn created by the wood mice were bad enough, that’s nothing compared to the amount of holes in it now! …And that’s not all; despite the feeder still being half full, one little devil is now busy going round all my plant pots digging them all back up again, Arghhhh! Our garden is rapidly being turned into a peanut plantation!
Even the blackbirds are becoming more brazen, their favourite game at the moment is Grannies footsteps, seeing just how close they can creep up on me from behind before I notice and I’m sure that if I left the back doors open for long enough they would be in the kitchen raiding the hedgehogs stash of food.
Tippy Toe (AKA Belladonna) is doing well, has put on weight and should hopefully be home soon. 🙂
