Wrens and Rats

I explained in my post A Happy Event that we had wrens making a nest in one of these pouches that were really only ever bought as night time retreats for birds to roost in during cold weather. As far as I know, no bird has ever been even slightly interested in them until this year, that is. Although I felt very honoured that wrens had chosen my garden to nest in, I was very disappointed as we were about to alter our kitchen roof and birds nesting would well and truly hold up our plans.

The wrens came back and forth with nesting material for a while and then disappeared for a week or so. Then they returned.

What is going on? Are they nesting or not?

I looked up details of nesting wrens on the Internet and noticed that the poor male bird builds three nests and the female chooses only one of them to lay her eggs in. The male must have made an effort to impress his missus with this nest, but she must have turned it down, as there has been no activity whatsoever for a good while.

You will be expecting an update on my rat problem. Do you remember (here) I said I wouldn't mention it until May Day! This is in honour of our name as all important decisions are made on that day in this household! May Day is also an international distress signal and I have been feeling very distressed about the rat problem, so it seemed appropriate to wait until that day.

May Day was also the day for Morris Dancing and son, Sam got up at 4 am to dance some where or other, more fool him I say! But I looked after the grandchildren while he did it. May Day is also traditionally, a day for dancing round the Maypole. Good old English traditions that are in danger of dying out, so Sam is doing his bit for the country, helping to keep these traditions going. I will be blogging about some of these things, separately, very soon.

Well May Day has arrived and gone and it has been decided that although the rat problem has calmed down since the underpinning, there have been some noises still, occasionally in the ceiling space but not like before. That indicates that there were several ways in. The underpinning solved the rat highway, but there is a little lane still to be blocked off.

So what are we going to do?

We have arranged to start work on the kitchen roof very soon. Scaffolders have been sending quotes and later this week, the May household will be in absolute turmoil yet again as work progresses. All this commotion for a rat, or two, or three!

Miscellaneous Updates!

Today I was reading the latest post from Confessions of a Rotten Correspondent, who decided to do an update of all the recent tales she had told about people, that had no out come and had left people wondering........

I must admit there are things that people might be wondering about our lives, so I have copied her excellent idea.

Well the first update is that Japan is managing quite alright without my family! That is rather silly! I just wanted to put in an unusual picture. However, as it depicts a festival of some kind, thought I would give you an update on the May Day activities.

In my post about Morris dancing, here  I told how I'd made a pair of trousers for Sam in very bright colours for him to take part in a display. Some people outside this country didn't know what Morris dancing was, so we put in a link and if you still have difficulty with this, you will be able to look it up.

On the morning of the display, Kaiko was not in the mood to go, as I suppose being her day off she wanted to chill out instead. I think you have to be English to do this mad sort of thing, anyway! So Sam took the children with him early and it was arranged that Harry and I would follow in our own time. It was quite a journey to go, so we didn't want to be stranded there all day.

Harry & I were about to start out on the journey and suddenly received a phone call from Sam, asking if we could bring a spare pair of pants for Amber as she had sat on a dog poo which was on a wall that she was sitting on. Dirty but clever dog to do that on a wall, which makes me think it must have been a fox.

As an afterthought he said, "Oh and would you bring some sewing equipment as the trousers need repairing."

Well, I thought this last bit was a wind up about my sewing, but I did slip in a needle and thread just in case.

When we got there, I quickly changed Amber's trousers & gave her hands a good wash. Then I asked Sam about the trousers and the whole Morris dancing troupe were falling about laughing as  one of the back pockets had almost been forced off. Sam had stuffed it with wallet & phone & obviously had put too much in there. Nothing at all to do with my sewing! 

Anyway, it was good fun watching the dancers & all the locals seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.

You might be all wondering what the outcome is of our son in law, who had a brain tumour removed recently. Unfortunately, it is not a good one, as the test revealed that it was a secondary tumour from the malignant melanoma that he had removed from his shin twelve years earlier. It was a tiny mole that had started to bleed and irritate when he put his socks on.

He is going to have radio therapy but we have been warned that it can't be cured and will keep coming back and no one knows where it will strike next or how long it will take. So this has been a terrible shock.

I feel I need to warn everyone to check your moles out, as I'd hate any one else to have to go through the same thing as our family is right now. 

Sorry to leave on a rather sad note...........