That's the third in a week!! I didn't think I had rats round at The Towers but it appears I do......or did.
I suspected my menagerie had grown some months ago when I noticed piles of earth in the corner of the greenhouse where someone, or something, had been re-enacting scenes from The Great Escape or, more accurately, The Great Infiltrate.
Now I don't mind rats. In my book, all animals are equal and none are more equal than others, with the possible exceptions of Dolly Parton, Rachel Weisz and Gordon Banks at one end of the scale and Thatcher at the other.
Live and let live, I say. Sadly, my beagle-jack russell crossbreed Tilly is not such an egalitarian. She, as a famous cartoon cat once said, hates "meeces to pieces" and sees rats as just mice on steroids. You've got to hand it to her. She's plucky, if nothing else, because she's no bigger than a large rat herself!
During the day she has taken to spending hours in the greenhouse, snuffling, truffling, digging and barking. I had an idea what she was up to. It was only after my
heron problem emerged and I started letting the dogs have the run of the garden at night that Till started producing the furry fruits of her labours.
Part of me is sad at the murderous rampage but, then again, rats don't normally come in ones and twos, at least not for very long. A Hamlin-style situation would not do me much good, nor the soon-to-be ex-Mrs Pither, let alone my neighbours, and so I suppose the job has to be done.
Once again, I have nothing for Grantham, not even rats. I think I am mellowing in my old age.
4 comments:
Closer reading reveals your heroin problem to be, in fact, a "heron problem". So relieved. Though I'm sure your fish would venture a different opinion.
The beagle done good.
You are indeed mellowing, my old mate. But then it's the burden of our species that we show compassion for all creatures great and small. I'm sure the rat would have all us Homo sapiens packed off to Grantham quicker than you could say "bubonic plague".
Me, I say fuck 'em. Every extinction we can manage is one less species to share these all too limited planetary resources with. I have to say I've noticed a LOT more bamboo canes in my local garden centre since they took pandas off the 1st class stamps.
By the way, sorry to hear about your continuing heron problem. If you provide me with some more anecdotes about it, I might write a novel called "Transpotting". I seem to recall some cunt by the name of Irvine Welsh (there's a fucking giveaway in the surname, right there) making a fortune out of writing about something he knew absolutely fuck all about. You never know what the great unwashed might want to read, do you? We might even get a film out of it. I can just see Ewan McGregor playing your good self and Robert Carlyle playing the mad bastard that he always plays in every film he's in. Top hole.
BGT
Arabella,
It is the heron who is going to have a "smack" problem, if I ever get hold of it!
BGT,
I don't think Ewan would take the part. I wouldn't want him to, either. I want to be played by Arthur Mullard (and he's dead!). I see Christopher Biggins as your good self, Jimmy Clitheroe as McIntee and Branty taking the part of the heron. There's money in this baby, I'm sure.
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