Some people in the Dublin suburbs boast discreetly of having BADGERS in their garden. They feed them as they feed the birds. Others are wary or disapproving. But the damage badgers do is minimal and, after all, they were residents on the spot long before most of the houses were built. For hundreds of years.
Anyway, to Eastern Europe. A citizen of Sopot near Gdansk, formerly Danzig, wrote recently that she heard a thumping in the back, looked out and saw a mighty wild BOAR rooting in her garden. More, the mother boar was followed by nine piglet boars. She stayed in until they had finished with the rubbish bin. Wise woman.
CATS were much in the news in England recently, when the Cats Protection League lobbied to have the age of licensing airgun holders raised from 17 to 21. More than 10,000 cats were injured by airgun pellets last year, according to vets in a survey. (But 89 per cent survived.) On the other side, are people who think that MPs might be lobbied, more helpfully, to have cats effectively patrolled by their owners. (Almost impossible.) But they have a point. The British cat population, according to the Field, already kills twenty million songbirds a year, including, of course, protected species. One former cat owner had to lock up the cat, a muscular male, for two hours after he was fed. Otherwise he went straight out from his meal to kill a bird, a mouse or a shrew, usually a bird, to bring back as a thanks offering to his hostess. (You don't really speak of cat owners. They just lodge with you.)
You may occasionally be visited by SQUIRRELS, the grey ones, even on the outskirts of towns. They can be destructive of young trees. Fergal Mulloy, mentioned here yesterday, had bad experiences with them in earlier days as a forester, but agreed that they seem to come in waves. Probably many die in the winter. One bird lover, out in the country, bore with their antics on her feeding devices, then suddenly there were no squirrels at all. Though, as Jack Whaley reported, they are shelling and eating his broad beans just now.
Seal watching through a mounted telescope, one angler in Connemara must sometimes wonder how many of the salmon he hopes to catch upstream are already in the intestines of the oatmeal coloured SEALS he fondly watches on a rock about 100 yards from his house on the edge of the sea.