Two Blind Mice

Well, dead ones, actually.

As I was about to clean out the hens today, I noticed that there was a dead mouse in the corner of my garden room, killed and brought in by one of the cats, then just left. I was going to put it into one of the bags of rubbish when the clean-out was finished.

At one point, I let the girls into the room, where a heater was on, providing them with the only source of heat they've had for weeks. Suddenly, Pansy's head snapped round, and she grabbed a dead mouse in her beak. But not the same mouse, one I hadn't spotted. She banged into the glass door in her hurry to get it outside so that she could throw it around, "kill" it for herself, then eat it.

I picked up the one I had noticed by the tail and threw it to Poppy, who looked at it bewildered. After a few moments, she pecked at it, and was beginning to show some interest, when Pansy, having finished hers, came and stole the other one. There followed a chase round the garden, in which Poppy kept trying to get her share, or at least some pointers, while Pansy repeatedly grabbed her spoils and ran away, unwilling to risk losing this extra treat.

Anyone reading this over supper?