Hi Annie
Digger didn’t turn up the next night, but the one after came at a decent time and tucked in hungrily to the hog food. Since then she has missed several nights on and off. If she came last night it was after the food was taken in. Very worrying. It may be partly because she is being pestered by the males (but can’t help worrying about those ghastly traps and I also worry about people feeding mealworms). One night the young male pestering her looked suspiciously like Horace! She was totally disinterested and just hunched up and continued eating, much to his disgust.
The dreaded blobbers have been at work and some of the hogs look a real mess. Some look as if more than one person has marked them, with different shades. One with zig zags. It is just so sad that the poor hogs are treated in such a way. It also makes it more difficult to identify naturally. I tried to start a hog group here, but no-one really wanted to know. I sometimes think people want to keep the hogs to themselves. If they are going to mark hogs (which I don’t agree with, but people are going to do it anyway) they should get together with other people who are interested in hogs in the area and reach some sort of agreed system, instead of everyone doing their own thing. So unkind to the hogs on many levels.
Haemobartonella felis was the blood parasite my cat had. I still remember the name after all these years! I have just looked it up on Google and see it has since changed it’s name. We didn’t have the internet in those days – 20 years+. I was told it was very rare – which didn’t really help much, at the time. Hope your friends poor greyhound does ok. I always thought that was more of a cat thing, but I know it can be nasty in humans too.
Re. rats. I know they are really quite intelligent animals. I had a friend at school who had a pet one! Not my favourite but they do get a bit of a hard time. By the way, they are experts at catching worms!
So sorry you still haven’t got hogs there. It is a dangerous world for any animal who goes out and about and I hate hearing the sound of strimmers. It all comes down to people being in too much of a hurry.
You are so lucky to see a water vole! Years ago, I used to see them regularly in the countryside, but now it is much more unusual. As with many wild animals these days, maybe you are more likely to see them in urban areas.
Horace, who is merging into the background a bit, now, seems to think hog food is better than kitten biscuits. But now the new rat is sometimes around, the hog food is only left out whilst I am there to watch, so some of the kitten biscuits go. I am amazed, and didn’t really notice it until the others came back, that Horace never messed in his feedbox! Obviously well brought up. He and his fellow hogs are still turning up annoyingly late. I sometimes only see one or two in person/hedgehog, but there seem to be quite a few more on the cams.
