I've had better days.
I've had worse also.
I want firstly to say sorry to this snake

















I'm sorry snake, I didn't want to kill you, please forgive me!

It happened like this..
It's been unusually hot this last week, temps hitting 34C, and if you know anything about snakes, you know they love it hot. Baby snakes hatch in these conditions: baby vipers are born live, up to a hundred at a time.
leela has already marched into the garden with a snake in her mouth and this morning it was the turn of Socksie who (as a present to Lili) dragged in the chap above into the house and placed it, still alive, under our bed.
It was a metre long.
Shrieks in the house!
I managed to clunk a glass cake cover over it and slide a piece of cardboard under its body (all this under the gaze of the feline sharks); to then slip it into a large glass jar which I sealed with a fitting glass top.
You're so brave!
Yes I know, but to continue...
I take the jar down to our neighbours thinking that they might at least tell me if it was a viper or not and they say yes kill it. I get this feeling that they call every snake a viper and kill it whether it is or not so I walk back home with snake in the jar looking at me with quite a sweet expression on its face and back home leave it on the garden table with the plan of taking it to a chap we know in town who really does know a snake from a cake.
Then...shrieks, even louder than before.
'It's escaping' Lili cries.
I rush downstairs and find she has taken the lid off to give it some fresh air!!
By then it is zooming in every direction and decides to bury itself in the dead leaves under the wisteria bush.
We are already getting late for appointments and the domestic sharks are waiting to go in for the kill. And I can't risk that it might indeed be a viper and the death of one our pets.
So I had to kill you poor creature.
I'm sorry and Lili is sorry too
Particularly because when we took you poor remains in to show snake expert he tells us that you were just an harmless grass snake.
We have decided to take a course on snake recognition

Fireflies

They're back!
How do they know it's the 4th of June? They're amazing, that's what they are. It was the first time Tikka had experienced them. and what with them and a couple of Dinos (Bambi-like deer) at the bottom of the garden making their cooing noises, she was astounded, in awe, hopping around from shrub to shrub. And all this after two days of torrential rain. Just look!
























Twenty centimetres of rain! Mudslides everywhere!