What do they say? We’re never more than 20 feet away from a rat? Something like that anyway.

A few months ago, the next-door neighbour called me over to the fence, a very unusual experience to say the least! Anyway, he proudly informed me that he’d discovered that there he’d seen some rats in his garden and wanted to know if I minded if he chucked some poison about.

“Not a chance,” said I, “one of our dogs kills and eats rats from time to time and if he were to catch a poisoned one, it wouldn’t be very good for him, to say the least.”

Canon EOS 5DS R – 300mm f4 @ 1/2000 sec

A week or so ago, I decided to stake out our garden.

Up went the tripod, on went a 300mm long lens and cable release [I’m not up to speed on hi-tech yet!], the stool put in position and down I sat to wait. The object was to try and discover who or what was nicking the food that Mrs R puts out for the birds. She had spotted plenty of different bird species, but didn’t think they had teeth: there were definite tooth marks on the coconut.

A squirrel was suggested, and quickly dismissed. There’s no woodland near enough, just the odd stand of trees, but only a squirrel could get to the bird’s seed, fatballs and coconut, right?

Wrong!

Is that why they call squirrels ‘tree rats’?

And by the way, as I told the neighbour, rats have been here ever since we moved in. They don’t really do us any harm here, as long as we anticipate them being around. They have a right to be rats… and anyway, they’re great fun to watch!