13
I made a mental note to remove it later, but, of
course, forgot until about 10.00 p.m. When I looked
out the corpse seemed to have moved, but as I was
looking into darkness from a lighted room I could not
see very clearly, so I fetched a torch.
I shone the torchlight down and was astonished to
find myself staring into the eyes of a hedgehog.
It was standing beside the dead bird, which by this
time had a bloodstained neck, where the feathers
had been pulled away and the flesh gnawed, presumably
by the hedgehog.
The 'carnivore' decided that it did not really like
a large strange being shining a bright light and
trotted off down the garden - not directly across
the grass, but round the concrete path edging until
it came to an end - perhaps this felt warmer?
And I always thought that these were nice gentle
creatures that lived on greenfly and saucers of
bread and milk!
Pam Jermyn
THE WASP AND THE BUTTERFLY
One hot sunny afternoon we were sitting in our back
garden drinking tea, when a Cabbage White butterfly,
which had been busy amongst our baby Brussel Sprouts,
fluttered up into the air and then dropped to the
ground almost at our feet. To our amazement we then
watched an insect drama. A wasp had caught the
butterfly, which made it fly as it did. When they
had landed on the ground the wasp repeatedly stung the
butterfly until it was dead.
We then watched as the wasp cut away most of the
head and clasping it, flew up into the air, circled