Topo Gigio!
If you were brought up in the 60s you’ll know that Topo Gigio was a rather endearing/annoying mouse puppet on TV. He sang, along with his family of other mouse puppets.
I’ve named my new friend Topo Gigio. He is somewhat shy and the first time I realised he was in the greenhouse was yesterday when I saw that lots of my newly sown seeds had been uprooted or generally tossed about.
Who’s been digging up my coriander seeds?
Purple bean seeds liberated from their trays ready for a feast later.
I also found a little pile of purple bean seeds lying on top of the compost in the hotbed. I know mice are not wild about disturbance so I took all the seed trays off the hotbed, gave it a good turn and added two more big buckets of horse manure. The temperature was still at 50C after I’d finished so I thought that was probably hot enough to put Topo Gigio off. I put the trays back in place and set the wildlife camera.
This morning I retrieved the card from the camera and wondered what I’d see. Occasionally I have a snake in the greenhouse - don’t panic - it’s only a non-venomous Couleuvre de Montpellier, shy and completely harmless - although they are pretty big at around a 1.5m or more. But I didn’t think it was that since they eat things like mice and lizards. No, it was a small and rather cute field mouse, sometimes called wood mice. From the photos I could see that it had been having a grand time running and jumping from container to container nibbling at different seeds. He/she is in each of these photos.
This morning I’ve covered all the trays and have strapped them down with elastic bands. That should fox him.
There’s plenty of evidence of field mouse homes around the vegetable garden too. I’m sure they are attracted by the hens’ food. I don’t really mind them being there as they probably keep down the snail and caterpillar population, so protecting my vegetables. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind if Topo Gigio sang too.
I’m a thousand times less happy to have a rat in our under-house store. In French this space is called a sous-sol or a vide-sanitaire. It’s the place where all the drains run, where we store all the tanks full of water from our roof and where we keep things like the strimmers, buckets, sprayers, lawn mower, shredder and ride-on mower. A few days ago I needed to use the mower to tow a trailer full of logs. It started first time after a winter of sitting doing nothing. I was thrilled. However, when it was as far as it could be from the store, or a power point, it decided not to re-start. I felt pretty sure the battery could do with a top-up so I pushed the mower towards the nearest socket and went to get the charger, also kept in the store. Look at what I found.
The mower charger. Defunct.
Those are rat teeth marks. It has chewed the charger lead off the bottom completely. What do they put in plastics these days? What is so attractive to a rat? That can’t be good for a rat and it certainly didn’t improve the charger. So I ordered another charger, charged the battery and the mower is working again.
I really think this creature was taking the Chinese Year of the Rat to a ridiculous level.
We’re on its case.
