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.

Neighbours

Redstart on the fence next to the strimmer

I spent the afternoon strimming the jungle that has grown in the yard. As I did so, I was watched by the redstart that lives in a hole in the back wall of my neighbours' house. When I sat down exhausted to peruse my work, the redstart moved in to pick up insects the nice human had revealed for him. We don't seem to get robins here the way we do in England, but the black redstarts have taken their place. Like robins they are fearless, feisty little birds who happily live alongside humans. They even have a flash of reddish orange. The blackberry bush was covered with bees and butterflies enjoying the nectar. Overhead there came a small murmuration of starlings, the rush of their wings sounding like a wave on the shore.

(Not my photo - I wish...)

At dusk I walked down the garden to pick some berries for tea. The bees and redstarts had gone. The mown grass was covered with large slugs. As I picked the berries, the corrugated iron that covers some planks of wood creaked and I turned to see the lithe shape of a beech marten spring up on to the barn wall and away. Now it is dark and I stand at my window watching the the lights of fireflies blink and float over the garden. No matter how much I love my English garden, and I do very much love it, I never feel as close to nature as I do here. 

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.