An Unexpected Visitor

Today I found a dormouse curled up on my living room carpet.

I always dread such occasions.

I've had a number of 'offerings' find their way into my home before. Frogs, mice, butterflies, and during the course of one memorable week, a succession of koi carp who flapped around helplessly on my kitchen floor. None of them survived my efforts of resucitation no matter how hard I tried to save them. I never did find where the carp were being fished from, but suspect my cats were working in tangent with a heron, who regularly flew over our garden with something dangling from it's beak. Rich pickings I suppose until someone wised up and covered their pond with mesh.

This morning I was on the phone to a friend when I discovered the mouse. The last memorable conversation I had with her involved me shrieking in horror down the phone when my dog dropped the skull of a cat into my lap whilst we were conversing. I thought it was a ball and went to throw it for her to play with, only to discover it was the remains of a much loved pet we'd buried years previously in our garden after she'd drowned in a neighbours water butt one summer's evening. A ghastly way to die, and in fairness my neighbour was utterly distraught - as was I. Anyway this morning my friend was completely unfazed when I suddenly announced I had to cut our conversation short to go rescue said mouse.

To my amazement it was still alive and completely unscathed but lay curled up in a tight ball on my living room floor, still in hibernation. My cat's had obviously given up trying to terrorise it due to it's inability to scuttle around. I say cats plural, but I think I have a notion of who the culprit who brought my little visitor in was, because she quite literally beamed at me from ear to ear as I grubbed around on the floor!

So I found myself on a mission to rescue the little dormouse and find it safe haven somewhere far from the eyes of prying felines. I've just been outside to check on it, and it's gone, vamoosh....so I'm hoping it's woken from it's winter slumbers and made it's way back into the world, safe from the attention of Kizzy, my Kamakazi Kitty...