Things Seen

[bunn]

1) a small black cat disappearing up the lane.  I thought she had killed a baby rabbit at first, as she was clearly carrying something heavy from the way she was running.  Then she jumped up onto the bank, and I realised that what she was carrying was actually a very small black kitten.   I have not seen her before.  I wonder if she is feral?

2) dead (but not squished) on the road below Kit Hill, something that was quite definitely either a young polecat-ferret, or possibly an actual polecat.  I know that the Polecats are coming back, after having been almost extinct and reduced to a tiny relict population in West Wales -  but in theory, they are not supposed to have reached Cornwall yet.   So possibly a feral ferret?  Although the difference between a feral polecat-ferret and an actual polecat seems to be largely philosophical.

3) a huge moon.   I took rather a good photograph of it, but you will have to take this on trust, as I then accidentally deleted the photograph before I had copied it off the camera drive.  Oh well.  It's the moon, you all know what that looks like.

Comments

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

The only time I have seen a polecat (/ feral polecat-ferret) was dead, on the outskirts of Monmouth.

I am reminded that those of my father's ferrets with polecat colouring and appearance were, on the whole, less tame and more viscious than the pure white ones.

[mcmurphy79.livejournal.com]

Awww little pussal. Hope she is caring for them well.

So sad when I see animals by the side of the road :-(

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... further to this rambling, earlier this year there were two young black wild rabbits - definitely part of an established colony, not dumped pets - living a couple of fields over. And a couple of days ago I saw a rabbit on the hill that was largely white with only a few brown spots - I suppose that might have been a dumped pet. But then all of the British wild rabbits are *someones* dumped agricultural surplus...

I have seen an argument somewhere that the polecat is not really native at all, since the Welsh name for them is not very old, but in fact the British polecats are all feral ferrets.

The people who want to re-introduce the lynx to the UK wish to do so on the grounds that the deer in Britain have no natural predators. This seems an odd argument among a teeming population of human beings, for the most part not vegan in diet. Not that I would complain about lynx. But only on the grounds that lynx are awesome, not on the grounds that reintroducing them would somehow be more 'natural' than shooting deer or killing them with dogs.

Stag hunting must be pretty awful for the stag, but I can't help feeling it may still be less awful than being killed by a giant cat.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I screeched the car to a halt on the road the other day because an enormous number of tiny rabbits had come spilling out of the hedge and were running everywhere! I made philmophlegm get out and help me shoo them all up the bank to safety.

The dogs were in the back of the car making faces that said 'LET US OUT! WE WANT TO HELP CHASE TINY RABBITS!!!' :-D

[mcmurphy79.livejournal.com]

My mum and I did a similar thing with a rabbit and our then lurcher penny was in the car. My step dad was mortified and said he hoped no other gypsies saw him!!

Hehehe love all animals and hated it if penny ever caught anything x

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Neither of my current 2 have ever caught anything. They are utterly incompetent lurchers :-D

I have more or less made up my mind that if they did catch rabbits, I can cope with that, on the grounds that wild rabbits have so much nicer lives than the chickens that go into their dogfood, and I think they do need some meat. With a rabbit it would all be over pretty instantly, I hope.

But as it happens, it's never really come up because Brythen and Az are both so clueless. :-D Mollydog did catch a squirrel once, shortly after I adopted her - but it bit her on the nose! After that you could see that she would carefully keep at least a foot back, if she chased something, just in case it turned nasty :-D

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... forgot to say, I'm going to keep an eye out for mama black cat. If I see her again, I'll find out if I can borrow a cage trap and do trap-neuter-release. There are plenty of rats and rabbits around here for a feral cat, but possibly not for a whole huge family of them.

[mcmurphy79.livejournal.com]

Penny ate one of john's birds - opps and also caught a rabbit with mixy which was probably a blessing, a rat and a squirrel so not an outstanding total x

[mcmurphy79.livejournal.com]

Good plan re the cat and very responsible. I like having a fellow animal lover on my fl especially one who loves lurchers x

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

The polecat name point is interesting.