Way out West (incorporating Way up North)

it's minute.

Works are now proceeding apace on the demolition and (hopefully) reconstruction of the back garden wall. The garden which up 'til now has been a merry playground for the foxes and assorted fauna, now rings to sound of chainsaws, demolition hammers and the merry shrieks of the great british builder.

Actually, the labourers are all Polish, and they refuse tea, preferring to lounge in the shade of the apple trees and read poetry, whatever is the world coming to?

During the prolonged and somewhat agonising preamble to getting this work underway, we acquired the services of the Master and Commander (on a temporary transfer loan from The Deep North), his invaluable (and valuable), not to say exhaustive (and exhausting) investigations have resolved the whole tiresome mess to our greater satisfaction. At one point he was conducting an interrogation of the brick rubble in the back garden, and returned inside to announce that he had found a lizard among the bricks. Now some time in the past I did find a red eared terrapin hibernating in one of the borders, but can only assume that it had escaped from someone's vivarium, or had rather unwisely been released into the wild (under ideal conditions they can grow to about two feet long, and can easily bite a finger off, not only that but they are bad tempered and riddled with salmonella).

In this case I was pretty certain that it wouldn't be a lizard, twenty or so years ago my cat brought in a slow worm, but that is probably the extent of the probable lizard types to be found in London. On the other hand, it was very likely to be a smooth newt (triturus vulgaris), as I released quite a few many years ago, and their progeny are still hanging about if you know where to look for them. The Master and Commander was quite intrigued, I don't think his day job had ever brought him face to face with a newt before, and they really are rather cute, and as amphibians go, quite blameless in their habits.

Some days ago, when the start date had been agreed upon, we received an edict: when the demolition works are taking place, the newts are to be rescued and put in a box. The former part of that sentiment I wholly agree with, the latter is contradictory to newt behaviour, like miniature geckos they are pretty much able to climb any surface, putting them in a box is tantamount to issuing them with a challenge. We compromised, the labourers were instructed, and told to put them on the other side of the garden, where they could join the other half of the newt population. The labourers have been keeping a tally, and so far have moved 35 newts, add this to the dozen or so that I retrieved the day before they started, and that is quite a healthy population.

Almost totally off-topic I know, but I was intrigued to learn that there is a colony of European Scorpions (Euscorpius flavicaudis) living on Ongar tube station, no need to worry, they are not a stinging variety. Apparently there are colonies in Britain as far up as Oxfordshire if you are mindful to have a look.

posted by Lampy @ 8/15/2006 12:23:00 pm