The rat race, or should I say chase.

(Images sourced from Google images - trapline.co.uk and bean-sprouts.blogspot.com)

Watching wildlife I must confess is NOT one of my pastimes. Shopping yes. Dinner out yes. But bird watching and the like, no definitely not.

Well I have recently discovered that sitting in the sun-lounge over-looking the garden can provide quite amusing entertainment.

Yet again I was at my grandparents who understandably rather enjoy sitting with a panoramic view of their garden, seeing the birds enjoy the left overs from last night’s dinner, the black birds having a punch up marking the territory as their own, and the pigeons getting a bit too up close and personal.

I was happily sitting in my chair, reading and occasionally gazing out the window when I noticed something move at lightning speed across my nan’s rockery. Perhaps it was a bird you ask? A scurrying squirrel? Well how wrong you are. It was a rat!

Now I know I’m not an expert on wildlife or a garden for that matter as previously mentioned but don’t rats live underground, usually in sewers and not in a garden by the sea?

“I’ve been trying to catch him for days”, my grandad groans, “but with no luck”.

My grandad is not one to give up until a job is done, as you all know from the blasted woofer! So each day he has been trying different foods in a rat trap (a humane one, don’t you worry animal lovers). But ratty has been far too clever. He’ll spot the food, sniff around the cage, and run away.

“Rats are highly intelligent”, informs my nan. But grandad was determined. After all he had managed to beat the seagulls who were dive bombing off the sun-lounge roof into the bird table and gobbling all the food before any other little tweeter had a chance to even browse the shelves. Now they were faced with sticks and meshing to get through and boy did they try! So far though they’re undefeated.

But ratty, he was a different story. He had now braved the grass and believe it or not, the bird table! Not only was grandad faced with seagulls and the occasional squirrel pinching all the food, now the little rat-meister had discovered that by climbing the pole to ‘Tescos for Tweeters’, he could almost reach food without having to risk the trap. However, as smart as he is, he couldn’t quite manage the distance between the top of the pole and the ledge of the table, so instead he just went up and down, up and down, clearly as determined as grandad.

Well you can guess what happened next. Yes the rat succeeded, God knows how! He was now able to run up the pole, jump up and around onto the table and grab what he could whilst the birds and ourselves looked on in disbelief!

“The little perisher!”

Not only had the trap failed, but my grandad was being made a fool of by a rat!

My nan and I looked on in hysterics, and I was surprised at just how entertaining these little creatures could be. The garden wildlife that is, not my grandparents!

In the end, once my weekend stay was over, grandad had taken to the bucket method which requires you to sit holding a rope that is attached to the bucket’s handle and feed it through a window to where you're sitting. With a small gap between the grass and the bucket rim, just enough for ratty to smell the food, it was very much a waiting game. However knowing my grandad, he’d be snoring not long after and the rat would seize his moment and once again, outsmart Mr Rat-Catcher.

And honestly if a 5 inch long, little rat could avoid a rat-trap himself but look on as numerous stupid blackbirds trapped themselves, succeed in reaching the top of a fairly high bird-table, and shun Charlie, the famous feline rat catcher, then undoubtedly he would overcome the bucket scam too. And guess what? He did!

This was almost a month ago now and little ratty is still parading in front of my grandparents, showing off his dexterity and victory in out-doing a human. He’s also taught all his babies how to climb the pole to Tescos too.

So, sorry grandad Ratty 3 VS You 0. But at least his keeping you occupied!

What happens when the woofer goes wrong

An evening at my grandparents can often turn into one of hilarity and hysterics and this Saturday night was just that. After finishing a buffet of delicious mini pizzas, quiches and other party food bits that everyone loves due the connotations they hold of Christmas, my grandparents, mum, aunty and uncle and I retreated to the living room for drinks.

Whilst listening to ‘Magic’ and drinking hot chocolates, my grandad (despite being deaf and needing hearing aids) was insistent on the fact that he could not hear the woofer. ‘The woofer?’ I hear you ask...

Well two weeks prior to that evening my uncle had installed his old television set at my nan and grandad’s as he had moved in a newer, younger and much flatter model into his home. After the worries of whether or not this 36 inch Sony monstrosity would fit between the shelf and fire place in their bungalow, the set was erected, DVD player, video player and Digi-box, the whole shebang intact. Not to mention the six speakers that created surround sound for my nearing eighty year old grandparents whose television habits included the daily news and nature programmes! Can you imagine the deafening noises of birds and elephants trailing out their windows? And of course, there was the woofer.

I had heard of a speaker before and even a base but until Saturday a woofer was not in my knowledge of vocabulary. After establishing that in fact the woofer wasn’t working as no base noise could be heard nor vibrations felt, and my grandad being one that hates leaving something until it’s fixed, my uncle decided to settle the matter by playing the first ten minutes of ‘Gladiator’ which would enable him to tell if the woofer was in fact, functioning or not. However this wasn’t until we had heard the word woofer at least fifteen times within two minutes...

“Rose the woofer’s not working, I can’t hear the woofer.”
“What, the woofer’s not working?”
“I can’t hear it”
“Maybe the woofer’s not turned on.”
“But I wired it up all right. It was working the other day.”
(Grandad bends down to listen if the woofer is working, with bum above head)
“Well I think we’ll defiantly hear a woofer now!” (You see my beloved grandad is notorious for, ahem...woofing)
“Where’s the button to turn it on? I can’t find the blooming button.” (My uncle had yet again forgotten his glasses)
“It’s the one that says ‘Woofer’.”
“Is it working?” (Nan bends down to see if she can hear it)

And this continued for a full five minutes!

Once the right button had been pressed and we endured Russell Crowe on horseback and a headless man, we established that “YES, the woofer is working!” And at this point we had tears of laughter from how many ‘woofing’ times the word woofer had been used!

So I now know that a...forgive me... woofer is actually “a loud speaker driver designed to produce low frequency sounds”. What I’d now like to know is why an earth my grandparents needed a damn woofer in the first place?!