visiting wildlife

The night camera footage of the bottom of the garden was inconclusive.  There were a lot of shots of Black and White Alsatian Killer Cat.  He was here this morning, too, sleeping in the rose bed.  I wonder what and when he eats.  I never catch him coming in through the cat door to help himself to our cats' food, so does he go home for meals and then come back to spend the rest of the time in our garden?  Or does he hunt?  Or is he in fact a demonic being in the shape of a spectacularly ragged eared and sinister cat that doesn't eat?

More surprising were pictures of Our Ginger at half past four in the morning.  After spending the evening in our laps or sprawled on the hearthrug he evidently has another life later on, when he goes out into the garden and patrols as the great orange hunter.

Two muntjac were an unwelcome surprise, as was the fox the Systems Administrator caught on camera last week.  The muntjac appeared in front of a shrubby honeysuckle, eyes glaring, but there was no clue as to how they got in or where they went.  And there was that wretched rabbit.

By day there were pigeons, blackbirds, a pheasant, a jay, several empty shots where it wasn't clear what had triggered the camera. and the rabbit.  Just the one rabbit again, moving across the grass in short hops and nibbling as it went.  If it would strictly limit itself to grass that would be fine, it could be my friend, but it doesn't.

I found another clue to the visiting wildlife in the form of an owl pellet under the Metasequoia.  I thought for a moment it was a large dried cat turd, the slightly furry texture being not unlike the droppings of a cat that's been swallowing too much of its own fur, before spotting the mess of little bones embedded in it.  They were very thoroughly dislocated and disassembled, in no way resembling a mouse skeleton, though the whole thing did have a vaguely mouse-like air, as if a mouse had been put through a miniature car crusher.

I put it carefully on the edge of the System's Administrator's sitting out deck so that I wouldn't lose it, but when I remembered that evening that I'd left it there, the SA did not show any desire to see it, enquiring rather whether it would not be unhygienic to bring it inside.  I could not see what was unhygienic about it, beyond the fact that it had been sicked up by an owl, and used to be a mouse, but I am afraid that the SA does not share my enthusiasm for natural history.  I tried to think who else among my friends and acquaintances would appreciate an owl pellet, but no names immediately sprang to mind.  I did notice that while in 2013 the Barn Owl Trust was offering mouse pellet dissection kits in their Christmas catalogue, complete with pellet, they had dropped them the following year.