We have had rat traps down for four days now. We have caught three rats (two of which were quite young) and three mice over the four nights with two traps being sprung without catching. We currently have them out but not set. I want to see if anything finishes off the bait, and I also want to give them a false sense of security. And, to be honest, I want a rest from emptying them.

When I am once again prepared for the sight of bulging eyes and mangled bodies I will give it another go.

I really don’t know what is going on in the world when I am feeling sorry for dead rats. However, rats spread diseases and I take immunosuppressants. The two things don’t go together well, and though I’ve not heard of someone getting ill from contact with rats in the garden, why take the chance? I once worked with a man who became ill after fishing. He seems to have come into contact with germs from rat urine in the water and when he put his fingers to his lips (he was a smoker) he made himself very ill.

However, I won’t bore you with my rat stories.

When I was an adolescent (and possibly a borderline embryo psychopath) I used to go out looking for dead animals by the roadside. I collected birds feet (this was a proper thing – there was even an article in the RSPB magazine about it. I still have the book on taxidermy I saved up for, though I never progressed to actually curing a skin or stuffing anything as I couldn’t get the chemicals and my mother objected to me storing dead birds and animals in the fridge.

The crunch came when I stored a dead mole in a box in the conservatory. I managed to conceal it from prying eyes for several days (I only used to skin at weekends) but after one particularly warm day it made its presence known and taxidermy was banned.

For some reason my word count has disappeared but I must be past 250 words by now so time to publish. I just noticed that I don’t have  place for Tags either. Curiouser and curiouser . . .