the saga continues (slowly)...
Speedy spent most of Wednesday trundling round the garden. Then I went out to the bins at about 3 and saw his back half sticking vertically out of the ground where I thought he'd gone to hibernate before. He was waving his legs around in what turned out to be quite a purposeful way because the front legs underground were digging him further in, bringing his back legs in range eventually. But it looked very odd.
After an hour or so of that, it was just the back corner of shell sticking out, with his back feet still working away and poking through from time to time out of a big pile of dug earth. It's a slow process. You can watch for 5 minutes and only see one footful of earth moved. We were curious to know how he smooths out the ground behind him, so we checked every 30 mins for a while, but it got dark and we gave up before he'd finished. There's a limit to how interested I can stay in a small patch of earth where the only perceptible sign of life is the occasional vibration or mini subsidence.
He stayed down all day yesterday (Thursday) and shows no sign of coming up today, even though it's very sunny and warm. But he hasn't covered his tracks either: the signs of recent digging are obvious. Does this mean he's planning to come back up? Or just keeping his options open? Maybe he thought he didn't need to smooth it as the whole area is quite lumpy and dug over anyway (I've been moving plants around). Or he just ran out of energy and couldn't be bothered after all that bobbing up and down...
I'll let you know.
Note to myself in case I forget: he's just in front of the blackcurrant.
Meanwhile, Leicester is catching mice and staying out late. Humbug is catching sticks and scoffing Leicester's share of the gushy fudz.
After an hour or so of that, it was just the back corner of shell sticking out, with his back feet still working away and poking through from time to time out of a big pile of dug earth. It's a slow process. You can watch for 5 minutes and only see one footful of earth moved. We were curious to know how he smooths out the ground behind him, so we checked every 30 mins for a while, but it got dark and we gave up before he'd finished. There's a limit to how interested I can stay in a small patch of earth where the only perceptible sign of life is the occasional vibration or mini subsidence.
He stayed down all day yesterday (Thursday) and shows no sign of coming up today, even though it's very sunny and warm. But he hasn't covered his tracks either: the signs of recent digging are obvious. Does this mean he's planning to come back up? Or just keeping his options open? Maybe he thought he didn't need to smooth it as the whole area is quite lumpy and dug over anyway (I've been moving plants around). Or he just ran out of energy and couldn't be bothered after all that bobbing up and down...
I'll let you know.
Note to myself in case I forget: he's just in front of the blackcurrant.
Meanwhile, Leicester is catching mice and staying out late. Humbug is catching sticks and scoffing Leicester's share of the gushy fudz.