Wildlife & Gardens

Yeah, I think the point is not to stress out if they droop a bit.

Good advice in general, actually.

 

Arthur my beloved cat was killed along with another at 6.30am yesterday.
We moved to this spot as it was secluded and animal friendly.
A kindly neighbour Geoff heard what happened and took Arthur to a local vet ( not ours).
Arthur was chipped but they still haven't contacted me.
So many animals,cats,dogs,horses,hogs,foxes killed due to speed.
I'm getting a spray can and spraying "slow down, you're killing animals" on this quiet suburban street.

 

You’re having a bad run aren’t you? Very sorry.

 

Sorry to hear that IBB. To kill 2 of them is something else, how bl**dy fast were they going?

 

Sorry to hear about recent events IBB, sympathy and best wishes to you.

 

So sorry to hear IBB. The death of a loved pet, particularly in those circumstances, is so painful and unfair.

 

Thank you Diamond.
Who knows?

Thank you Fancy Fibert Fox.

Thank you Tut.
Kay,the practice manager at The Veterinary Centre in Peartree WGC collected Arthur from the vets where the kind chap took him.
I'll have his ashes in a fortnight.
The other practice still haven't contacted me which is poor.
I feel privileged to have been able to have Arthur in my life.
I hope I gave him the best life an animal could wish for.
Everyone has been very lovely.

 

That’s so sad IBB. I’m sure you did give him a great life.

 

We lost our beloved rescue cat nearly ten years ago but soon after arranged to get two kittens (brothers) through Cats' Protection.
They have been a joy and are still entertaining us (i.e. we're serving them) today. I hope you can do something similar.

 

We were very sad to lose our rescue cat to ill-health 18 months ago. Truly seemed such a part of the family. We left it a while, but got another rescue cat some months later that had become a stray during lockdown (unchipped) and got injured. My word, what characters both of them.

Hope IBB can find another character.

 

Thank you HH24.
It's very poor but the kind words and gestures of friends and neighbours is lifting my spirits.
There are a couple who make jewelry from pets' ashes and fur. I'm going to get an Arthur ring to keep him close.

Yes I will but Ford Dante Pericles Coleridge need time to mourn him.
Cats Protection is a brilliant charity and I support them with donations and a cat pen, currently occupied by Barbara ( much to a tennis pal of the same name's amusement!) and her kittens Banana and a couple of other 'Bs'!

Thank you Moose,I will be doing that!

 

I forgot to update. Caught the glisglis.

 

Are you sure it's a glis glis? Based on that photo, it looks like you've caught a huge piece of "belly-fluff".
So did you take it out and club it to death?
Roughly where do you live? Last I heard they had only spread about 20m from Tring.

 

EDIT - was looking at it on the phone and could only see the end of the tail

 

You need to zoom in.

I paid for a pest controller to come and dispatch it humanely.

I live in Chenies. They are common here, based on accounts from neighbours.

 

Obviously going to love a well insulated loft like that. You need to make conditions harsher.

 

Hostile environment?

 

Theresa May sitting up there would scare the bejesus out of the little terrors.

 

Have you ever considered getting your loft insulated?

 

Looks like to one I released near the end of your street last year.

 

It's now 119 years since the glis glis escaped from the Rothschild collection at Tring. Yet it's distribution here remains as "within a 20 mile radius" of said town. And I'm not sure if 'radius' is correct either. As far as I'm aware it doesn't like the Vale of Aylesbury so said radius would probably be a half-radius to the NE/SW then or even more confined as Tring to Chorleywood. Or 'our bit of the Chilterns'.

This strikes me as strange. This animal is widely distributed across Europe except in Iberia where it's confined to the north coast. It probably doesn't like 'hot and dusty' then. Who can blame it? Neither do I.

But here, what has stopped it marching west to the Cotswolds? That would be the normal progression for an animal increasing its range without any obvious barrier to that expansion.

I'm sure there are plenty of well insulated lofts in the Cotswolds with electrical wiring to chew on and turn the lights off enexpectedly. So what's holding the glis glis back? I've really no idea. Answers on a postcard please.

 

M40, M1 and M25?

 

Yep. I've no idea why they simply didn't get in a car either. More seriously, those roads (along with the vale to the northwest), do rather define the range. But the first of those roads were only built some 70 years after 'the great escape'.

 

Bridges?

 

Presumably the lack of suitable corridors to travel along to reach the cotswolds due to increasing urbanisation/fields of crops ?

 

No, probably A40 towards Burford.

 

Not many on the M40 and besides, they are not easy for a little varmint to use. Maybe the tunnel near Redbourn (of the M1) but again not a good habitat for a rodent other than a fast moving rat.

 

Not as far fetched as it seems iirc.

 

Lazy? Unmotivated? Too busy playing old arcade games in @wfcmoog loft?

 

Equally, why not fly?

 

Doubt it. I reckon you could get from the Chilterns to the Cotswolds without coming down from the hills. But you'd have to cross the M.40. You could do that at Aston Rowant (for example). A National Nature Reserve on both sides of the motorway where it cuts through the Chiltern escarpment NW of Wycombe.

In all seriousness, applying Occam's razor, the motorway argument does have legs though. Good one Moose!

 

Bear in mind per Wiki "...Edible dormice inhabit deciduous forests dominated by oak and beech, from sea level to the upper limits of such forests at 1,500 to 2,000 m (4,900 to 6,600 ft). They prefer dense forests with rocky cliffs and caves..."
There are plenty of pockets of suitable habitat including those you have suggested but it's not easy to pick a route that gets you from Tring to the Cotswolds without traversing urban areas, motorways, dual carriageways, rivers, fields after fields of crops, all far removed from their preferred habitat of dense forest.

Today, the British edible dormouse population is thought to be 10,000 strong,[10] and Glis glis have been recorded in a 25-kilometre (16-mile) radius of Tring, mostly concentrated to the south and east.[11] The area of distribution has been described as a 200-square-mile (520 km2) triangle between Beaconsfield, Aylesbury, and Luton, around the southeast side of the Chiltern Hills.[12] (this info is at least 8 years old)

 

Didn’t know dormice were edible. Thanks for the tip. May try them in tempura.

 

Only glis glis, not our native hazel dormouse