Where’s the Birdie?!!!

I watched a wonderful documentary on BBC Four the other night about the dawn chorus.  It was part of the slow television series of programs which included a very relaxing two hours of television following a barge on it’s journey up the Kennet and Avon canal.

Mehmet The Magnificent and Tina Sparkles had gone to bed early leaving me with Tomasz and Tufty-Tim curled up on the sofa beside me.  According to the documentary, early May is when the dawn chorus is at its loudest and as the television set came alive with the trill of bird-song the cats began to stir.  Tomasz, a seasoned house-cat having had two homes before being adopted by my clients, watched the screen intently but seemed to know that the birds that hopped about on it were not accessible to him.  Tufty-Tim, however, being the youngest member of The Freathy Feline Four and coming from rural beginnings was fascinated and flummoxed by the chirping, two dimensional creatures that tantalizingly fluttered before him.  So real did Tufty-Tim believe them to be that he sat in front of the television, patting the image of a blackbird perched on the branch of a tree with his paw.  When the black bird flew off, Tim got up onto the television table but couldn’t catch it!  I had visions of Tufty-Tim jumping over the telly and getting into a pickle.  Despite encouraging him down from his vantage point, Tim still had to check around the back of the T.V. set just in case his feathered prey were hiding behind it!!

Basic Instincts!!!!

Can you hear the rabbit screaming?! Can you?!  Well I did the other day when Gwynn, the springer spaniel caught a kit!! I’m used to the spangles disappearing into the woodland undergrowth, especially Gwynn, who I’ve nick-named Thunder Knickers because she charges through the brush like a rhino with a firework tied to it’s tail!! So I didn’t take too much notice of her headlong dash into the foliage other than Bracken, who is usually her steadying influence, followed after her.  I was alerted that something was a foot by a stomach churning scream which had me looking around wildly for a child in danger!  It was then that Gwynn came tumbling out of the thicket of brambles with the baby rabbit between her jaws! In her excitement she dropped the hapless rabbit, which stunned, lay on its side gasping for breath.  I’ll give the dogs their due, once I’d warned them off it, they left the small, bundle of grey fur alone.  I couldn’t be sure if Gwynn had done any internal damage to the creature.  I took in the rabbit’s heaving side, it’s huge black glassy eye and its tiny body and thought I can’t dispatch this poor thing, what am I going to do?  I didn’t want to let the dogs finish it off, which might have been quicker?!  I wondered if the shock would kill it? In the end I left the kit, hoping it would recover from the shock.  I felt terrible as I walked away from the small, helpless animal but I couldn’t bring myself to put an end to its suffering, which may have  been a kinder thing to do I guess.  I took the dogs on a circular walk and we passed again the spot where Gwynn had dropped the baby rabbit, it wasnt’ there.