The Long Grass

[That's not me in amongst the brambles - see below for explanation]

The grass had been left too long for this to be an easy cut, but a recent Sunday came when the rain had stopped and there was an unfamiliar heat coming from the sky.  By mid afternoon the lawn was still covered in dew but this was about as good as it was going to get for the final cut of the year.

The flymo didn't much like the soft earth, it juddered and scraped into it with every forward thrust, gauging out a furrow.  But it also succeeded in cutting away the long grass which was the main aim.  An opportunist robin searched for insects and worms several yards from where I was working, always in the corner of my eye or behind my back it dodged my gaze with brilliant cunning.

Once I was done, I carried the freshly mowed grass to the edge of the garden where the previous grass had become a habitat for beetles and worms.  A cloud of midges hung over the debris and I emptied the bag of compost over them.  They scattered for a while and then reformed exactly as they had been before I arrived. 

I noticed that the brambles had hidden themselves among the rambling border and sent several barbed tentacles through the domestic plants.  Tangling themselves deliberately through the desired inhabitants I wouldn't have noticed them if they had kept to the border and not created a tripping hazard across the path.  One job leads to another when you start on a garden.

The brambles

You couldn't rip out these great arms of barbed vegetation with your bare hands.  They needed handling with leather gloves and cutting away at the base with a razor sharp instrument of some kind.  I used a kitchen knife, though I know we have some secateurs somewhere, but they've been eaten by the house like everything else that is, on rare occasions, extremely useful.

I worked my way back down the tentacle of thorns to find where it was coming from.  Deliberately the plant had positioned itself in a crevice beneath a broken stone of the leaning wall.  Digging out the root system wasn't going to be easy, in fact it wasn't going to happen because I hadn't planned on this job anyway.  So I cut and pulled at each of the tentacles and removed them as near the base as I could get.

The longest of the brambles I had removed was about seven feet long and its stem was about a half an inch thick at the base.  I folded it carefully up into a half circle half ball as it snagged and tore at my clothing.  Then I shoved it beneath the hedge and watched it unfold like a still living things.

Brambles have achieved in Hawaii what the Japanese Knotweed has achieved in this country - the status as a ferocious and invasive weed, smothering and killing local crops.  The story is a familiar one, the plant was introduced for ornamental reasons and its favoured crop of blackberries, but it has no natural enemy in an environment it didn't evolve in.

http://www.state.hi.us/dlnr/dofaw/hortweeds/index.html

Yew & Me

Looking up into the Yew Tree I see the berries hanging like droplets of blood on the evergreen.  And I remember my Grandad telling me how the berries are poisonous.  His voice still comes back to me after all these years with varying kinds of advice.  In fact, most of the Yew Tree is poisonous, including the wood, bark, needles and seeds.  It was used to make arrows during the Middle Ages and even if the arrow caused but a flesh wound, the unfortunate recipient would still die of poisoning.

The birds have been consuming the berries in large amounts today.  Foraging up in the branches and down on the ground where some have dropped following a windy night.  They seem to have no problem with the poison and simply eat the berries whole.  The seed passes through them intact and the rest of the berry is digested.  I guess this is no accident, as the tree benefits from spreading its seed far and wide, and the birds benefit from a fruit that nothing else can eat.

Mice in the Attic (Part 1)

The mice in the attic have come back.  Lying in bed last night I could hear them scratching and scraping above my head, one of them was making so much noise I thought it was going to come through the ceiling.  This is not a new development.  Ever since we moved in they have been a recurring theme.  Just as your head hits the pillow they start with their night time activities.  You can win a battle but you can never win the war - let me explain.

The first time I heard them I thought a squirrel had got into the roof space, or maybe a rat, that’s how loud they were.  So I went up there to investigate, squeezing through the small entrance into the loft.  It soon became obvious it was mice because several of them wandered passed me, bold as brass, heading for the other end of the building. 

I’m not fond of this roof space which is full of a hundred years of muck, debris and dust.  There’s an old wasps nest right next to where you poke your head up when first entering the space and it looks like a carcass of some kind in the torchlight, and spider webs hang everywhere from underneath the stone slates.  You have to watch where you tread for fear of putting your foot through the ceiling, and also negotiate several internal walls.

I’ve got nothing against mice and used to look after them when I was a kid and my parents wouldn’t allow us a dog.  But you don’t want them taking over your house.  The fact is they will find their way into your kitchen and piss all over your breakfast cereals.  Mice have no bladder and are permanently urinating as they go about their daily routine.  And they breed, oh boy can they breed, reproducing every few weeks so that numbers quickly quadruple.

Despite the fact they are a nuisance, I didn’t particularly want to kill them, so my first line of attack was defence - I blocked up every obvious entrance route into the attic.  I went through with this expandable foam that sets as hard as rock and squirted it everywhere I thought the mice might be coming in.  Then I got hold of some humane traps and set them to catch the mice.

It took several days for one of the mice to go into this trap and then, according to instructions, I had to transport it at least three miles away from our house so it wouldn’t find its way back.  I let it go up on the moors where it would most likely perish anyway.  I knew this wouldn’t be the end of the problem because mice are social creatures and rarelywork alone.

Sure enough, that night, as my head hit the pillow the mice started partying again.  And this time my partner hated the noise so much she went and slept in another room, this was proving a serious issue.  I was lying there, in the cold, with no-one to hug, listening to the mice enjoying themselves.

The blocking of any obvious routes into the attic was a waste of time, this whole house is riddled with spaces between floors and walls that stretch out into the joining properties.  Mice can squeeze through the smallest of holes and it wasn’t going to be possible to block up every single one.  It was worth a try, but turned out to be completely pointless.  The overpriced humane traps were equally pointless.  In fact I think the mice, which are not as stupid as we think, were extremely suspicious of crawling into those odd looking tubes of plastic. 

None of my mouse friendly strategies had worked and the population had doubled in the time I’d taken trying to reduce their numbers by one.  I really didn’t like it, but more drastic steps were needed.  And these drastic steps involved a Mars bar, a drawing pin and the lid off a jar of honey.

Mystery Bites - Ouch!

Somewhere between here and there, between a road and a field, between a footpath through a woods and a garden with a path covered in moss I was attacked.  An ant perhaps, or a murderous mosquito?  A horse fly or a flea? Whatever it was had a right good go at me, trapped inside my shoe as it went on its way, ripping chunks from my flesh.  Now the creature is gone, but its trail of destruction is left, itching like a bastard! 

The wasteland across the way is a breeding ground for biting insects. And at this time of year they seem hungrier and more savage than any other.  They are preparing to die, in the inevitable frosts, and they are turning even more poisonous in this bitter ascent to oblivion.

The spots have formed miniature volcanoes that are oozing a lava of clear body fluid.  I have to scratch them some more even though I shouldn't, it gives me great relief but is short lived.  Ravaging my skin with my blunt nails so the area looks even worse.  Roll on the winter and let it be a cold one!

Ladybird, ladybird fly away home

Ladybird, ladybird fly away home,

Your house is on fire and your children are gone,

All except one,

And her name is Ann,

And she hid under the baking pan.

Fluttering inside the lamp in the living room was a ladybird.  At first I thought it was a moth or a fly that had interrupted our evenings telly watching.  When I got closer I saw it had distinctive red spots on a black background, rather than the more familiar black spots on a red background.  I watched the spotted wing cover lift and the wings emerge to carry it towards the energy saving light bulb, a remarkable piece of natural engineering.

I haven’t seen much of the ladybird this year and why it had suddenly appeared at the end of October I had no idea.  Perhaps the endless rain had upset the balance as it had with many other insects, animals and plants.  I cupped the delicate creature in my hand and carried it to the front door.  Letting it go into the night time air I realised it had turned cold and this sole survivor was unlikely to last very long.

A little bit of research and I discovered that this insect may have been yet another example of an invasive species, the harlequin ladyird - also known as the halloween ladybird, which may explain its appearance at this time of the year.  But I couldn't be sure, because at around 5mm in length it could have also been the native 2-spot ladybird.  Identifying ladybirds can be a tricky business for a lay person.

The Spanish Slug

A thick trail of slime had appeared from underneath the kitchen door, stretching up the wall to the shelves.  It was the middle of the night and I’d been struggling to sleep so had come down for a drink.  Alarmed that something had got into the food store I opened the cupboard doors and peered inside.  There was movement of some kind coming from behind the tins of beans and tuna, but in the poor light I couldn’t see very much.  Cautiously I moved the tins to one side and that’s when I saw him, the biggest slug I’d ever seen in my life.  I broke out in a cold sweat.

It was about 15cm long and oozing its way through the back of the cupboard.  It had a light brown foot and bright orange skirting.  Its long optical tentacles waved slowly back and forth in the gloom as it continued on its way, taking little notice of me, as it searched for something to munch on.  It was the infamous Spanish slug recently in the news for thriving in the UK.  Not the first time I’d seen one of these creatures, but certainly the biggest one I’d come across.

I got some kitchen roll and caught hold of it so that its huge body collapsed and rolled in on itself.  Even in this defensive state it was the size of a tennis ball which I carried to the kitchen door.  It was pulsating between my fingers as I hurriedly unlocked the door and lobbed it into the back garden.  I went to the sink and scrubbed my hand free of the brown slime that had soaked through the tissue.

*****

Later that night I had this horrible feeling the super slug had re-entered the house.  This time there was trail of slime up the wall near the window, so I pulled back the curtain to see where the creature had gone.  There was a crack in the wall into which the mucus trail led and I put my fingers and hands into it, prizing it apart.  I pushed my head into the opening and in the distance I could see something shimmering so I crawled inside.  There was building debris and brick dust and then a thousand moths surrounded me with noise, calling me all the names under the sun – except there was no sun.

I pushed onwards through a mirror pool of mercury emptied from old thermometers, through the petrified celebrity trinkets that hung from the ceiling, through a valley of five legged worms that pulled me in every direction, through the bad memories until the terrible guilt was gone and then, finally, I found king slug, sat aloft a throne of solidified slime, his voice boomed out in anger.

“Why have you followed me here?”

“Because I need to know what you are,” I said, rising up from all fours.

A slow and ugly smile spread across his face.  “Don’t you realise?  I am part of you and you are part of me.  You are the perfect host, and I am the perfect parasite.  We co-exist, you and I, living off each other.”

With that I visualised the ever present exploitation and could hardly speak for the anger and frustration of it all. 

“You’ve been holding me back for years, feeding off me like a cancer that never kills, but brings the illness.”

I smashed a sharp quartz crystal from a rock and picked it up.  I let the darkness sparkle on its razor blade structure.

“Ha! You haven’t got the guts,” slithered king slug.

And with that I lunged at the monstrosity and sliced and diced its soft underbelly into a thousand pieces.  The cavern was filled with the groans of a dying scum bag and the globules of yellow green slime flew all around me like ejaculated freedoms.  And when I’d finished the onslaught I dropped back against a smooth boulder and surveyed the scene.  The barbed structures of this underworld all covered in the remains of my foul deed, until I let the moment glide away, and dreamt of falling beneath a parachute to a freedom I could never have.

Plenty more leaves on the trees

"There's naw point sweeping up them leaves lad.  More yet to fall!"

The voice came from behind me as I was filling another bin bag by the gate.  I turned round to see the old fella looking up at the trees and then back at me.  His dog was also questioning my actions with a stare.

"I know," I said. "It's just they're getting slippy."

The fact is I nearly went arse over tit earlier today as I stepped down onto the pavement.  I broke an ankle that way a few years ago and I didn't fancy hobbling around like that again.

"I'm just saying, plenty more leaves on the trees." He shrugged and continued on his way, tugging his hound to follow.  The dog looked as if it wanted rescuing, but went slowly on its way.

I looked up at the copper beech.  It was still half full of dusky leaves ready for the drop.  I didn't really mind the job, despite its futility, because it got me out the house and moving around.  My working life was one of sitting in front of a computer, or sitting in a meeting, or sitting in a car, it felt good to be outside.

"That's going to keep you busy," came another voice, and I looked up to see a neighbour from a few doors down.  She was being taken for a walk by a young dog that was straining on the lead to get going.

"Yeah, certainly will," I answered and stopped to chat, but she was gone to the pull of the young dog.

Funny how such a mundane task can bring you into contact with people you normally never see.  And also yield many comments on a job that no-one else can be arsed to do.

Badger Attack

Driving back from a gig last night I passed alongside a wood not far from home.  There were no other vehicles around at this late hour and as I rounded the bend, an adult badger ran right in front of me, charging intently across the road.  It narrowly escaped becoming road kill and only because I swerved to avoid it, something I remember my driving instructor telling me never to do.  It wasn’t that he didn’t like badgers; it was just he thought better to kill an animal than yourself.

I was relieved not to have hit that animal, but it reminded me of something that happened to me a few years ago whilst walking home from the pub.  I’d had a few beers and a good night out and decided to take a short cut across some fields.  It seemed like a good idea and would shave at least ten minutes off my stagger back.

It was one of those clear sky nights when you can look up into the heavens and appreciate the insignificance of everything.  The vast universe is circling overhead and all you want to do is get back for some cheese on toast.  I stopped at the edge of the field and lay down to look at the stars.  They were moving, in fact they were spinning and it felt like instead of the earth being underneath me it was piled up on top of me, and I was just sticking to it.  That's when I realised those jager bombs were not such a great idea.

As I stumbled to my feet I heard this weird grunting and growling coming from some trees at the edge of the field. The noise was getting steadily louder and more aggressive.  I had to pass near the trees to get over to the road and as I did so the animal stepped into the open.  Even in the poor light I could see the distinctive white stripes of the badger, but this was a giant version.

It probably wasn’t the wisest of things to do to wave my hand at the creature and then make a hasty move for the exit, because the badger lunged at me and got hold of me by the leg.  When I say it got hold of me, it bit into me like a bastard and started shaking its head as if to tear out a bone. 

I was shouting in a high pitched voice: “Fuck off you fucking fucker bastard!” and I tried to shake it off to no avail.  Fortunately, in my pissed state, I couldn't feel very much, but I knew there would be blood.  I limped and dragged it all the way to the wall where it suddenly let go and backed off, still growling at me.  Then it turned and ran back into the undergrowth.

I was stone cold sober and as white as a sheet when I got home.  I had a banging headache and my hangover had arrived seven hours earlier than expected.  I cleaned the wound and could see the deep teeth marks and various scratches where the badger had clawed me.  I couldn't get over how aggressive it had been, but I guess I paid the price for straying too near to a badger set.  Any naive ideas I had about badgers being cuddly and friendly little critters were wiped out that night.  They are wild animals and very territorial, and in many ways we don’t know enough about them.  Whether they carry TB or not I don’t know, but my doctor recommended a tetanus jab.

The Black Squirrel

A lone grey squirrel was bouncing across the lawn this morning, heading cautiously for the neighbours garden.  And it was right to be cautious, because the neighbour has two cats, one of which is a psychopathic killer of wildlife.  I have on several occasions found the feathery remains of some unfortunate bird that ‘Whiskers’ has ripped apart, and more recently come across a severed hare, with only its head and front leg left - a gruesome find for immediately after breakfast.

The grey squirrel got me thinking, as did my piece about Japanese Knotweed.  Many plants and animals that we now take for granted on the British Isles were introduced here as a result of human migration and interference with the natural order of things.  And when it hits the news it always seems to be that the feebler indigenous species is being wiped out by the new arrivals.  The grey squirrel has a reputation for having pushed the red squirrel out of its rightful living space.  Ironically, there is now news of the American black squirrel (above) that is systematically elbowing the grey squirrel out of the habitat it stole from the reds.  How far back do you take this view of invader species?

It seems to me that these movements in living things are simply part of nature doing what it has always done.  Human interference may have altered this pattern, but it is most likely inevitable that a new animal will eventually come along and outpace a slower, smaller less adaptable variety.  Maybe creating sanctuaries for creatures that can’t compete is slowing down the grim reality of evolution.  Nature is impartial, the natural order of things seems to be for creatures to eventually die out and succumb to another.  Didn’t we, as Homo sapiens, throw Neanderthal man out of his rightful habitat hundreds of thousands of years ago?

My Pet Wood Lice

I swear to God this house is being consumed by wood lice.  These mini armadillos are everywhere at the moment, popping out from beneath the skirting boards and crawling across the carpet, appearing from nowhere in kitchen drawers, strolling in through the front door and even dropping from the bedroom ceiling.  It occurred to me that I knew nothing of these creatures or how they live, what damage they do and for that matter how to get rid of them – or at least reduce their numbers.

The more I read about the humble woodlice the more strange they appear.  According to informed sources they are the only of the crustaceans (e.g. crabs, prawns and lobsters) to have evolved from the sea, and they still breath through gills which are situated on their legs.  This adaptation to dry land only goes so far as they still need to live in areas of high humidity.  Once a woodlouse enters a dry area they die within several hours because they don’t have the ability to prevent moisture loss.

The rainy summer we’ve had explains the sudden rise in the woodlice population, they thrive in wet conditions.  In addition, the fact that damp can be a continuing problem in this old house and the plants growing near the exterior walls don’t help.  But I’m not about to rip out the garden because of these little invaders.  The fact is they don’t appear to do much damage at all and they tend to die anyway, if they stay too long in a dry environment (I’d vacuumed up quite a few desiccated carcasses already).  Nope, the more I understood, the more I realised this was going to be a case of live and let live.

Japanese Knotweed

It’s dying away now, the Japanese Knotweed that lives on a stretch of rough land the other side of the shared drive.  At least the part of the plant that lives above the surface is dying; the rest of it will remain alive and kicking beneath the ground, hiding out the winter until it takes back its powerful grip on the waste land next spring.

I’m not sure when it first took hold of this space that used to be covered with nettles.  But the nettles have all gone and now there is only this supreme invader, pushing its way through a pile of concrete and rubble that a neighbour dumped from a kitchen conversion a few years ago.  He’s moved away now but at one point he got so angry with this monster weed that he attacked it with a machete - the plant just grew back stronger and even more abundant.  This plant loves conflict.  

Japanese Knotweed was introduced to the UK by landscape gardeners as a feature for carefully crafted estates.  It might have been considered impressive in the 19th Century but there’s not much attractive about it, even the flowers are just strands of seed which attract little in the way of insect life.  But it has a taste for the rough and ready wasteland and disturbed environments, and is capable of growing through tarmac and even into the foundations of buildings.

When I contacted the local council to see if anything could be done they advised that it would be the responsibility of the landowner, and that the process of removal is a long and expensive one.  Each plant has to be individually injected with a powerful herbicide at both the start and end of the growing season.  There are also sprays that can be used, but they are so strong they kill everything else in the vicinity, including trees, shrubs and bushes.  These chemicals are the equivalent of Agent Orange.

A few days ago I breached the low fence and ventured into knotweed territory.  It was a bamboo like forest stretching some eight feet above the surface.  Using a sharp knife I cut a section through one of the plants and was surprised at the hydraulic pressure within the plant – this is what makes it capable of growing through concrete.  The powerful stem of the plant was filled with sections each of which was full of liquid that would dry away come the end of the summer.  The brittle remains of the plant would make it appear dead, but it was still very much alive below ground, in a root system that stretched down several feet.       

I have no idea who owns the land but chances are they won't spend the small fortune required to clear away the knotweed.  So the plant will remain and is best left undisturbed watching out over the space it has claimed as its own, doing little in the way of good for the natural environment, but providing a focal point for conversation about the weird looking weed that is appearing everywhere around these parts.

The Forest Tick

I was in the bath when I noticed the angry spot on the inside of my upper leg. An unusual shape with a head that looked like it needed squeezing. So that’s exactly what I did, taking it between my thumb and forefinger I pinched at my flesh. There was a burst of something and I didn’t think much about it until I studied what was left of it on my thumb. That’s when I saw it, a tiny living thing with a fat body, swollen with blood.

It wasn’t moving so I placed it on the side of the bath to study it some more. There were light brown markings on its back and the majority of its legs were towards the front of its miniscule head. In a bit of shock, I called out to my partner to come and have a look at the swelling in my groin area. She happily obliged and studied the creature, immediately recognising it as a tick and flushing it unceremoniously down the toilet.

I’d returned from a cycling weekend in Scotland and that was why I’d needed a good soak in a hot bath. We’d done over 50km of off road biking in the forests and off road tracks of Dumfries & Galloway. A brilliant cycling trip, but it turned out that somewhere on those long rides I’d stood for too long away from the track. That was when the parasite made its move, clambering out of the long grass and onto my leg to find a place of safety, hidden away beneath my shorts.

I’d heard about these ticks before and also knew that they had the potential for carrying Lyme Disease, so I checked out the situation on NHS Choices website and this is what they had to say:

“Lyme disease is a bacterial infection that is spread to humans by infected ticks. Ticks are tiny arachnids found in woodland areas that feed on the blood of mammals, including humans.  Tick bites often go unnoticed and the tick can remain feeding for several days before dropping off. The longer the tick is in place, the higher the risk of it passing on the infection.”

I reckoned that my new pet had been with me for at least a day so I arranged a trip to the doctor to get it looked at.  A thorough check of the area around the bite and a blood test, just to make sure, gave me the all clear.  I was lucky this time round, because Lyme Disease can be a nasty health condition if left unchecked, causing muscle pain, joint pain and even temporary paralysis of the mouth.  I didn't much like the sound of that, though I guess it would have put the final nail in the coffin to my career as a failed singer song writer - for which many of my friends would be grateful.

Fallen

All of a sudden the leaves are falling in great abundance, forming piles of debris that will rot and turn to soil if not swept away from the garden path.  Slippery in the damp conditions of an October morning they have also settled on the car, turning it into a kind of camouflage vehicle that is hidden from the gloomy sky.

I drive the leaf machine to work and watch in the rear mirror as great swirls of vegetation fly off the roof and onto the road behind me.  I’ve scattered what’s left of the summer time to the edges of the tarmac where they will be blown away or sucked up by the road cleaners.  One leaf holds on for dear life just out of reach of the windscreen wipers and never let’s go, all the way to Wakefield.