Day 237 - Vole Hoovers

vacancy

Friday night sure rolls around quickly of late...

This evening we found that they've now finished harvesting the fields around us, which frees up the access to the hole side of Barney the barn owl's tree. 

As you can see, it's a lovely shelter, with a solid platform inside a big old tree.  I've seen three young perched in here in the past, but they haven't nested here this year. 

Bizarrely, the tree is actually still alive, albeit much of it is hollow...

entish

We've had glimpses of Barney in several of these holes, and he seemed to be able to move around fairly freely in there. 

It's a very cool old tree, anyway.

In other news, the Killer Queen is on the rampage at the moment...

ritual sacrifice

I found this vole on the rug in the kitchen when I got home.

Within 5 minutes of opening the front door, Loz came in with a live, squeaking juvenile vole...I chased her out and got her to let it go, but within minutes she was back with another one. 

I shut her in for a bit, which she was really offended about...but later in the evening she was back out, and bringing more struggling young voles back, to the extent that we've had to shut her in again.

At the moment she's prowling the window sill, looking out into the night longingly, and miaowing at me in a frustrated tone. 

I presume the harvest has flushed lots of small animals into the hedgerow, and Loz just wants to go out there and sweep them all up, as I'm sure Barney would be if he were around...he's a vole hoover too. 

I've watched him hunt in the meadow (the next field over), and he was getting a kill every few minutes and brining it back to his young in the tree above...he must have killed a couple of dozen a day, at least. 

Hopefully the tidal wave of death and torture will subside in a day or two...

impressive

Speaking of which, my 'boarding injury is now a large, swollen bruise on my forearm...suffice to say, I wore a short sleeved polo shirt today in order to impress everyone with my war wound. 

I'm sure that will have had the desired effect, won't it?

One of my staff asked me what I done, and when I told him he said (as predicted),

"How old are you?!  There's some kids out the front doing loads of tricks on skateboards and bikes, it's crazy...they're about ten years old...".

So I'm fairly sure he's impressed with my youthful energy and enthusiasm.

I think that was his point anyway...

...yeah, that's probably it...

;-)