Murder in the bedroom.

One of the problems with leaving my Czech house empty for months at a time is there are sometimes some nasty surprises when I get back. Once it was a blooming of dryrot fungus in the kitchen. This time it was the signs of a murder in the large bedroom.

While I was away my neighbour with my agreement showed a friend around the house, as the friend was looking for somewhere to buy in our part of South Bohemia. What my neighbour did not know was that you needed to make very sure the cellar door is closed because the local farm cats like to jump through the cellar window and get in to a nice warm house. There was a definite cat smell about the house when I arrived and paw prints on my furniture, but that wasn't the worst of it.

In the large bedroom the floor was covered with tufts of fur, and flecks and smears of blood. When I swept up the fur it was apparent that the creature that came to a grisly end there was not exactly a mouse, the hair was longer, had an orange tinge and there was a large pile of it. I still do not know what the victim was, but I do have a good idea about the identity of the murderer. I suspect that the creature that did the deed was a beech marten. I have seen them around occasionally. They are capable of taking quite large mammals: such as rabbits and squirrels. They will also take kittens, something my cat-loving friend was always worried about. It may well have been an immature cat which was followed and cornered in my bedroom. I will never know for sure. Whatever it was, I had the unwelcome job of clearing up.

Salamander, salamander

Okay, I know it's a rubbish photo, but given how secretive the fire salamander is I was delighted to see it and manage to fire off a photo before it disappeared.

Just under four weeks ago (it feels much longer, given all the things I have been up to in the meantime) I was in Czech Paradise (Cesky Raj) researching a geological tour. I woke early and, although it had been raining heavily in the night and was still mizzling, I decided to walk the Riegerova trail. The trail is a nature trail with an emphasis on geology, but the most exciting sight was not the very impressive and varied rocks but a small golden and black amphibian.

I had nearly finished the trail and was walking down a track in the direction of a restaurant by the road, when I saw something gold and black some yards in front of me. I have never seen a salamander in the wild before, although they are to be found in Czech forests, and at first I didn't realise what it was. It seemed too brightly coloured to be an animal so at first sight I thought it a bit of rubbish left by some careless walker. When I drew closer and as the salamander made a dash for the verdant verge I scrambled to get my camera out of my rucksack.

It is amazing that such a brightly coloured animal can still be so secretive. Apparently it rarely comes out of its hiding places during the daytime and only then when it is raining. It likes to hide in rotten tree trunks, which may account for the legends about it living in fire as it would appear in people's fires when the log it was hiding in started to burn. The salamander has therefore a special place in alchemy and myth.

It very soon disappeared and I had to be content with this blurry picture. But I went on my way rejoicing at my luck at seeing it at all. I thought as I walked about how I would have shared this experience with my Czech friend, had she been alive. But then I thought that maybe she had been there all along, after all hadn't her online name been Salamander?

Walking around the World

I walked around the World on Thursday and it only took me three-and-a-half hours (it would have taken three but I stopped in a pub for a drink and an ice cream). The secret to this feat is the fact that a pond near to Trebon is called Svet, which translates as "world".

I was researching a possible walk for a short walking tour for a client and this was one on my list of possibles. It is now a definite. It is a wonderful walk, which with the exception on mountain scenery (it is in fact a very level walk) encompasses nearly every type of Czech landscape you can find. In just over 12 kilometres you walk alongside a lake/fishpond, past reedbeds filled with birds and brilliant jewel-like dragonflies, enter a protected woodland with its peatbogs and rare flowers, go through traditional farmland and flowermeadows and a forest with bilberry and cranberry plants, and finally through parkland. Along the walk are information boards about the animals (eg otters, edible and tree frogs), birds (eg ospreys and kingfishers) and plants (eg venus flytrap, mosses, and grass of parnasus) that thrive in the different habitats, as well as information about fishponds, traditional vernacular architecture and the formation of peatbogs.

It was a blissful walk: not too demanding, educational, and varied. Even the weather was perfect - sun, but not too hot with a slight breeze. I recommend it to you.

A Small Furry Housemate

As you may have read in a previous post I do have problems with mice (mys) in the house at this time of year. With fields and orchards behind the house it is to be expected. However this year there has been no sign of them, so the traps have been left unset.

You can imagine my frustration therefore when I woke to hear rustling in the corner of the bedroom. I turned on the light, nothing. In the morning I checked everywhere - the worksurfaces showed no tell-tale signs of mouse droppings, the bread and potatoes remained ungnawed. I decided I must have been mistaken. The following night - rustling. Again I searched - no sign of mice activity.

Then the other evening I was sat writing at my computer when a small mouse-shaped creature ran across the floor. I set the traps and waited. I watched as the wee animal, as bold as brass, investigated the living room floor. It approached the trap, I braced myself for the sound of another mouse meeting its doom, but nothing happened. I got up and looked. The animal was near the trap and was totally ignoring its contents. Then it pounced on something on the floor. Puzzled I looked more closely, this was not a mouse, but a shrew. I am used to the small variety of shrew we get in England, but this was definitely its larger Czech cousin.

I am fond of shrews. I like the little feisty critters, who will take on all comers, even animals their own size. They need to, they have to eat their body weight in food everyday to survive. I unset the traps and read up about them. This one is I think one of the white-toothed variety. I read that it is solitary, does not climb, does on occasion live in houses and most importantly is carnivorous. What does it eat? Why! Spiders, flies, beetles, cockroaches and mice. My little brown friend can definitely stay!

Tracks in the Snow

I have often talked in this blog about my encounters with Czech wildlife, but it is only when one sees the many tracks in the snow that one realises just how much there is and how close one is to it. When I was a little girl there was a children's tv programme called (I think) Town Boy, Country Boy and featured the incomparable and much-missed Jack Hargreaves (the old guy on How!) In it a town boy is taught about the countryside by Jack. Like that boy I was fascinated by nature and wildlife and longed to be able to track animals. Now here is my chance.

From my hazy memories I think this scene above is where a deer ascended the railway embankment to cross the track to the fields beyond.


And this is from a rabbit.

And the one below shows where a buzzard swooped down on its prey, it hopped around a few times before taking off. You can see the marks of its wing feathers in the snow.


I have bought myself a book of animal tracks so that I can read the signs better – it is in England and I will bring it back when next I visit.

A Trip to the Zoo

As I mentioned in my fox post a few weeks ago I recently enjoyed a visit to the Zoo Ohrada at Hluboka Nad Vltavou. The Zoo is one of the oldest in the Czech Republic, it is also the smallest. The Zoo can be found next to a hunting chateau of the Schwarzenberg family and was created to complement the hunting activities of its owner. Thus it has always had a focus on European wild animals, something that continues to this day – two thirds of all the animals there are European.

You approach the zoo down a double avenue of oak trees leading up to the chateau, on your right is a vast lake, with the town and castle of Hluboka on the far shore. The castle, which will get its own blog post some day, was created in the 19^th century architectural style of Tudor Gothic – think Windsor Castle in white and you get the idea and sits on a headland overlooking the town and the river Vltava. I can think of no more beautiful setting for a zoo than this one, however the size of the zoo (limited by the island on which the zoo sits) does have its limitations. The smallness makes it less tiring for families with small children, who certainly love it there, but it limits the size of the animal enclosures too.

I have very mixed feelings about zoos, I am not a ban-all-zoos purist but I do think that animals should be kept in conditions that at least approximate to their natural conditions. It seems to me that some animals seem more able to handle captivity and it is not always the obvious ones either. The other Czech zoo I have visited is the one in Prague and which I think works well, using the hilly landscape of the zoo to full effect, giving space and variety of terrain to the animals. At Hlubloka there are signs that they are trying to improve things, including creating new enclosures , but the Zoo is restricted by its size and flat landscape.

As I said above, the Zoo Ohrada specialises in European wild animals and this was one reason why I wanted to go. The display panels for Czech animals were labelled with a CZ, the background colour of which indicating the rarity/endangeredness of the animal in question – white common, red in gravest danger. There was a wide range of water birds and birds of prey, especially owls. One of the best sections was one entitled Czech Woodland, this walk-through enclosure was a miniature wood with all those birds I normally hear but never see. Even then I didn't see all of them, but I did see quite a few.

The place was heaving with children who were clearly loving it. My party was made up of a group of water colourists, who went off painting the animals, so I resorted to taking photographs, which is as far as my visual art talents go. Here are a few to give you the feel of the place.

Meetings with Foxes

On Saturday I took a taxi home, as driving having drunk alcohol of any quantity is forbidden in the Czech Republic. On the road we came across a fox – the taxi slowed to a crawl and the fox disappeared from the headlights' fierce glare into the verge. “Liska,” said the taxi driver smiling. Strangely this was my first encounter with a wild fox (liska) in the Czech Republic, although I see them regularly in England on the hills around my home. The only previous meeting had been with a sad fox at a nearby zoo, which paced up and down in its concrete cell.

My Czech home is built into the slope of a small hill, the downstairs rooms at the back being literally scraped out of the rock and earth. The hill is called Lisci Dira - Fox Hole in Czech. The following day I set off for the woods to walk and collect mushrooms. After the intense heat of the day before, the sky was cloudy and threatened rain. We had not had rain for several weeks and even then it had not been enough - the wood's floor was tinder-dry. I was just about to turn for home, when I spotted a clump of chanterelle mushrooms. I had looked in all my usual spots for chanterelles without success and had come to the conclusion that the drought had put paid to them. But there they were hiding in the moss. The Czech name for the chanterelle is Liska Obecna – common fox.

I had just picked the last of them, when a drop of rain fell on my arm. By the time I was out of the woods, across the field and into the narrow track that runs down to the village, I was soaked. As I came to the end of the trees that lined the track, I was stopped short by an extraordinary sight. There in broad daylight – it was 3pm and so mid afternoon – was a fox standing in the middle of the lane. It contemplated the scene for a while and then trotted off into the fields. Now I have seen foxes in daylight in London, indeed we had a whole family of them living in our back garden, but they were urban foxes used to people and had no cause to fear us, so unlike their country cousins. I walked on musing on this strange meeting. It is apparent to me that the fox allowed me to get that close. In my haste to get home and out of the rain I had made no attempt to walk softly and a fox's big red ears can hear a mouse squeak at 100 metres, I had stood watching him for a good minute or two before he chose to move off. Now he had chosen to stand in my path.

I am told that to the Czechs this was a lucky occurrence, that the fox is an animal spirit associated with witches and his appearance to me (not once but twice) was a sign of good fortune. I certainly felt lucky to have met with "bold Renardine".

Some Czech animals and a present.

The other evening my sisters and I were barbequing some sausages over an open fire in the warm May evening air, when we realised we were being scrutinised. From the dandelions in the orchard a small farm cat was watching us and the sausages. The little cat was a lovely combination of white, ginger and black with only its head to be seen above the leaves. My sister made the usual cat attraction noises but nothing happened. We therefore ignored it, and slowly it came nearer drawn by the smell. Eventually its confidence raised it was rubbing its head against the table legs and even tried to jump up on my lap. My Czech friend arrived and being a cat owner and lover was soon making a fuss of the little one, including feeding it some leftover sausage pieces, which were pounced on and devoured – better than the cat's usual fare to to be sure.

In the morning at breakfast we discovered there was a present lying for us on the patio – a slow worm neatly bitten in two. The orchard is full of wildlife, a reason for the presence of a hunting cat in the first place. The ground is pockmarked with the holes of voles and mice, and the grass is also the haunt of their hunters – cats, grass snakes and adders. The orchard backs on to farmland and a wooded hillside and as I have said in a previous post it is visited by deer, here to scrump the fruit. Another animal in these parts is the beech marten which I have yet to see alive – I have seen several as roadkill – and which I look forward to meeting, although I am told they are a menace as they will chew through cables. The slow worm is another hunter in the grass and hibernates in the wood piles and heaps of grass cuttings. But this one thanks to our furry friend will hunt no more.