Well the garden of our new house is shaping up to be fun. I was able to sit watching a cat lying in wait for a pheasant today. Obviously, I would rather have been outside chasing them both that luxury was not afforded to me. The cat, mainly white with a splash of black, was trying to camouflage itself amongst the fallen leaves. The pheasant a, leaf coloured female, was happily strutting up and down not looking for cover. The cat kept trying to pounce and the pheasant kept flying up and landing somewhere different. Now until this, I have always thought of the pheasant as the bird brain of the feathered world. I know they are all bird brains, but you know what I mean. My respect for them has gone up enormously and I’m now wondering whether we could work together to good effect.
On the wildlife front, although less encouraging, we have had to send the last batch of oats we bought back to the manufacturer due to it being recalled because of the possible presence of the ‘confused flour beetle’. I was all for eating the oatcakes my Mistress had made and seeing it as extra protein, but she was more squeamish and preferred the refund. If they were confused at the start of the process, I wonder how they felt when they’d been mixed with a bit of marmalade, sugar and whisky! My please to eat all the ones that were being thrown away fell on deaf ears, I’m sorry to say. I shall just have to queue up to eat the batch that my Mistress bakes as a replacement. I wonder what confused the beetle in the first place. Maybe it preferred wheat and only ended up in the oats by accident.