Alone and unattached, or with fox-family and friends, the unwelcome canine creature for whom I have little sympathy, is not the only island animal for which I have hard feelings. Even the squirrels that run around the cottage before darting up a tree, fail to melt my heart, at least since the time when I used to grow strawberries. Of course, I was not naive enough to think they would be left undisturbed by local land-based or airborne marauders if unprotected and so they were carefully covered with netting. It was a good year for them and they were admired by friends visiting from the other side of the planet. Suddenly my friends called out to me.
”Don't get angry,” they said.
Angry? Why Should I get angry?
They were laughing.
I followed their gaze, and there was a squirrel, which had managed to lift up the netting though I fondly thought it was firmly secured, sitting on the ground, happily munching my plump red fruit!
Then there are badgers. I have admittedly only seen one on the property in the past year or so, but there used to be a whole family somewhere very close by. They would regularly come out for an evening stroll when it was getting dark, keeping to the edge of my place as though there was a public right of way there. Innocent enough, you might think, but given half a chance they would tip a dustbin over and spread everything in it around the landscape, something the fox must have learnt from, although I have never heard of him trying to get at anything so large and with a lid.
Most people visiting the island would rank the roedeer above the squirrels as the most attractive of the island fauna. They ooh and ah over them and think they are so graceful and pretty. Residents hate the sight of the them. Let them get anywhere near your vegetable garden and it's goodbye to all your hard work and epectations. In the growing season, when the island is full of the food that they can keep them in the pink of condition, they will nonetheless go for the little you have carefully nurtured and maintained against all the odds. And they won't just take a lettuce and be satisfied with that, but will go along a whole row and bite the tops off every one!
Towards the opposite end of the size scale are the much-despised slimy slugs. There are two varieties that set alarm bells ringing in these parts, the longer black 'forest slug' and the fearful brown invaders commonly known here as 'murder slugs'. Many are the tips that are bandied about for dealing with them. One that I have tried is to sink little pots of beer in the ground around the vegetable plot. Sure enough, no sooner had I done so than it became evident that the creatures will do anything to get some free booze. Their advance party must have spread the word far and wide and soon every slug on the island was heading in this direction!
Okay, many drowned in the drink, but their numbers are unlimited. Moreover, it didn't take long for assorted birds and beasts to discover there was good ale-marinated grub to be had in those sunken pots. I would come out in the morning and find they were no longer in the ground, but had been lifted up and tipped over to get at what was inside.
So what to do? Even with only the smallest horticultural aspirations, life is a perpetual battle against these voracious, heartless invaders – and I have hardly mentioned aerial bombardment by winged creatures of varying sizes, all with evil intent. I have but one card up my sleeve, one that I tried to a very limited extent very late in the season last year. I hesitate to speak too quickly, but a full-scale trial is due to begin in the spring.
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