I always used to maintain that Ian’s idea of happiness was to have a stack of books, newspapers and a computer in the room with him (and a pen in his pocket) and the people he loved in the next room. He would know they were there, could reach them if he wanted to, but they would not disturb him. Things have changed a little and he now likes to work right in the middle of everything, where life swirls around him. But for the garden, his old way of loving lives on. He likes to know it’s there, he loves it being there, but he really would rather not have too close a relationship with it.
Now I know our splendid ride-on mower belongs to me, but true happiness for me is seeing my mower being used by my man. It’s not that he’s way better at mowing than me, though he is… he seems to be able to get it to mow through the swings and much closer to trees than I can ever manage, it’s that I don’t like mowing. It drives me nuts. It is sooo slow. You can go slowly or more slowly on the mower; you cannot go fast. It makes me impatient and as I potter along I see a hundred other jobs I’d rather be doing in the garden.
But I missed a trick last week. I asked Ian to do three jobs. Too many. I asked him to empty the pooper scooper (a great big horse scoop so it can get horribly full and very stinky) as it was his turn, to collect poo from the garden, and to mow. Now that was daft. That was far too much. Had I just asked him to mow, he’d have had to scoop the poo and to do that he’d have had to empty the scoop.
Anyway, all that is a little irrelevant as though it meant I had to spread my requests over a couple of days, Ian did do the mowing. And, as always, he did it far better than I. And when he did mow he came across a baby bird. Ruth, who was out (starkers but for her wellies) filling a huge gardening bucket with windfall apples in the hope of earning herself a pound, was despatched to ask what one does with a baby bird. I know what we used to do… we’d find an old box, fill it with cotton wool, attempt to feed the bird milk through an eye dropper and eventually we’d have killed it with our kindness. Nowadays I’m more inclined to suggest that nature is a marvellous thing and just to leave it alone to die or survive.
But I’m not so heartless that I can’t remember wanting to save small birds so I looked on the RSPB website, but my internet connection was hiccoughing and my patience short and I wanted to get back to organising the village harvest supper (how did I get myself into this??) so I found no answers.
Ian’s solution was to fill a bucket with leaves, put the bird in and place it in the wendy house, leaving the upper door open (so a parent bird could get in) but the lower door closed (so the cat couldn’t). The next morning after reading up on bird rescue he put it back on the grass for its parents to find, but then he couldn’t stand it any longer and put it back in the wendy house away from predators. What should he do next, he asked? I don’t know. I suggested chewing up some worms and spitting them into its mouth. That apparently was not a helpful answer.
Then when I asked the girls to come and make their Menu C lunch selections for school they came hurtling down the garden full of talk of a fox. A fox. It was right at the back of the garden, on the path under the leylandi neighbouring Tim’s garden. It was simply lying there, flat out. Not very fox-like. Ruth and Ian went up close to investigate. Oriana wanted to see but didn’t want to get too close so I carried her round the other way so she could see better without actually having to pass its head. It was clearly injured.
What to do, they asked. My thoughts naturally turn to who might have a gun to finish it off and wondering if it can go in the green bin, which goes out this week, or if I have to leave it in the black bin, which has another ten days of festering before heading off for the landfill. And then I realise my family are not thinking of a quick end but rescue. Rescuing a fox!
And before I know it their collective cloud of fox-love has blown me back into the house and I find myself on the RSPCA website. I am flabbergasted. All the more flabbergasted when I find myself phoning them. Luckily Ian walked in at that moment and I was able to hand over to him as he’d examined the fox far more closely.
They advised him to prod the fox with a long stick and if it didn’t move to call back. To my huge relief it limped away to Tim’s garden. I feel a little bad that Tim will now probably have to deal with a dead fox, but greatly relieved that I will not be implicated in interfering with nature. I think the RSPCA does amazing work, but surely with limited funds then they want to concentrate on cruelty to animals not the cruelty of nature?
The next thing I know, Ian is up a ladder looking for nests for the bird. He discovered that the only nest up the tree above the bird’s original landing place was a little smaller than the bird, but concluded it would give it the best chance of survival. This only I scoffed at his suggestion that he hang the bucket in the tree. I just couldn’t see the bird’s mother knowing what to do with a bucket and if the bird could not yet fly, which it had already demonstrated, how on earth would it get itself out of a high-sided bucket?
Before Ian ascended the ladder to place the bird in the aforementioned far-too-small nest, he insisted I take a look at it. Baby! It was bloody enormous. The size of a duck! We haven’t seen it since and there have been howling winds for a day so perhaps our baby duck was happy in its too-small nest. And if it did blow out into the jaws of a passing cat, at least we didn’t see.
I am still chuckling at the duck in the tree.
