We’ve been invaded. Not by small boats silly, by another species entirely. There is a deer problem on the smallholding.
Hubster and I noticed a strong musky scent under the trees at the end of the meadow. There are also tell-tale flattened areas of long grass and an increasing number of young trees with stripped back bark which often is so serious that the saplings die. As this is far from ideal Hubster has fixed a couple of old fences, if that doesn’t work, apparently a sock filled with bits of soap dissuades the herd as, contrary to our own olfactory system, the scent of detergent is massively disconcerting to other animals. If they keep coming in, we might need to take further action. Roe deer venison for dinner anyone?
All things great and small
If you rewild an area and provide new habitats, then it’s only to be expected that you’ll gain new neighbours. We are now sharing our space with a huge range of animals, plants, fungi and the bucket of the classification, protists of which lichen and algae are good examples. If we just think of the vertebrates, or even more specifically, mammals, we have a plethora of species cohabiting with us.
Rabbits
Firstly, we have irritating but cute wild rabbits. Now, I personally think they are adorable provided we keep them out of the veg patch, but they do have a habit of digging out large burrows.
Tikka the cat tends to keep numbers down and very occasionally we have a year where a nasty case of endemic myxomatosis reduces numbers significantly. Some say the Romans reintroduced the rabbit to Britain, others point to the Normans, but they are here to stay. We’ve tried roadkill rabbit for tea before but, even after hours in the slow cooker, it was tough as the sole of my old walking boots.
Foxes
We’ve seen evidence of foxes too although never seen one by eye. They are timid around here, probably taking shelter from the local hunt. They leave small piles of dark scat which has a distinctive musky smell. I didn’t need to put my nose close to the droppings to notice this. If left to her own devices, Mabel will roll in it, leading us to take a picture of her on more than one occasion with a notice declaring her misdemeanour and sharing it on social media. This might not make her smell any better but pet shaming itself is slightly cathartic.
The moles drive Hubster to distraction. They may be charming to look at in their soft downy grey velour moleskin coats, but they cause havoc for the ride-on lawnmower and often disturb the roots of immature plants. He only uses the traps when absolutely necessary and, according to the number of hillocks of earth, we seem to be maintaining a healthy population.
Finally, alongside a multitude of field mice which eat the split seed below the bird feeders we have also photographed other mammals on our wildlife camera in the form of badgers, voles, shrews, stoats, and a random hedgehog. Spotting new visitors or cohabitees always fills me with happiness. This year our breeding colony of soprano pipistrelles has returned to live in the eaves of the house for a few months over the summer. The faint aroma of ammonia might be vaguely unpleasant but watching them go out on their insect hunting at dusk is thrilling.
Town mouse turned country mouse
One of my favourite stories in Aesop’s Fables was of two mice; a proud town mouse who visited his cousin in the country. The country mouse offers the city mouse a meal of simple fare, at which the visitor sneers and invites the country mouse back to the city for a taste of the ‘fine life’. But their feast is interrupted by a cat which forces the mice to abandon their meal and retreat to safety. The town mouse reveals that the cat killed his mother and father and that he is the target of frequent attacks. The country mouse immediately decides to return home, preferring security to opulence or, as the 13th-century preacher Odo of Cheriton phrased it, ‘I’d rather gnaw a bean than be gnawed by continual fear’. I might have been born as a city mouse, but the green expanse of the countryside feels more reassuring than the hustle and bustle of the Big Smoke.
Our offspring are back for a few weeks of summer. Like mice, they are eating us out of house and home. One was caught at the door of the fridge eating a block of locally sourced cheese from a high welfare dairy straight from the packet. I gasped in horror as they smiled sweetly and asked, ‘have you seen the price of good cheese?’. Well, it’s hard cheese from me as I’m going to start rationing it!
The good, the bad and the ugly
Some visitors to the smallholding are really not invited. If you keep chickens, you’re almost bound to have rats nearby as there is an abundance of food. Although we don’t get them in the house, on the smallholding it’s likely that I’m never less than a few feet from a rat. Rats are almost completely commensal in Britain; they’re associated with human activities. Generally, we don’t bother each other but if there is a strong smell of rat urine it’s best to steer clear as it can cause a nasty case of Weil’s disease. If left untreated, this can lead to kidney failure, liver failure, or heart failure.
When Hubster was a child growing up near here there were tufty little red squirrels aplenty. Over the past four decades these have been pushed out by an invasion of greys. Not as cute but we don’t aim to kill them as it feels that any biodiversity should be protected. I was mortified when one ran under the week of my car recently. In terms of damage caused, homo sapiens are causing far more trouble for biodiversity than any other species. We may be ‘wise humans’ but most animals seem to inherently behave in an interdependent manner that does not cause the collapse of the ecosystem they depend on. There may only be one letter difference in ‘eco’ and ‘ego’ but there is a world of difference. Two thousand years ago Aristotle placed humans at the very top of his Ladder of Life to demonstrate the hierarchy of living organisms. Plants were placed at the base but, whereas plants will thrive without humans, we are very much dependent on them, and the rest of the earth’s ecosystems, to survive. Maybe the ladder idea wasn’t so great after all Aristotle!
Compromise and compassion
At school the Eco Committee declared they wanted to take part in the Restore Nature Now march in London last month. There were a zillion reasons that this was never going to happen (funding, distance, time, lack of cover staff and risk assessments to name a few) but the main issue is that children are not allowed to miss school to protest for a better future. As a consolation we decided to have a Biodiversity Day to raise funds to protect nature. The children dressed up as a huge range of animals with the best dressed awards going to a Year 8 in an incredibly detailed papier mâché elephant costume and a Year 7 dressed up as a rather terrifying looking leopard. The Head Teacher was slightly disappointed that her monkey suit didn’t warrant a prize but at least she didn’t go bananas.
It would be remiss of me not to mention politics as the election is now done. I’m not partying too early, there is a mountain of work to do to fix what is broken but, most importantly, we need to remember that all of us cohabit on this island, and we need compromise and compassion to survive and thrive. Look to your human neighbours and celebrate the good if you can. At the end of the day, we’re all homo sapiens whatever shade of our skin or colour of the political party we support. Goodness, I spout some rubbish sometimes, crack open that bottle of fizz!
Note to self: Don’t forget to remove the wildlife camera from near the school pond. On downloading the images, it was great to see the fox having a late-night drink at the waterhole but a bit of a shock to see images of a couple of the Year 11s doing a bit of their own research on human courtship behaviour.
