Journal Entries
Exciting Nature Thing II - They're Back!
Posted Sep 9, 2005
They've stayed away all Summer ... but tonight, they came back! 
All right, one of them came back. Actually, it might be a completely different badger. But I'm soooo excited! 
All was quiet and I was sitting here typing when a shuffling sniffling noise wafted through the window. Just a quick one, then it all went quiet again. I didn't even think it was badgers, but I snuck downstairs to retrieve the torch anyway, brought it back up, shone it outside and ... nothing.
No noise, no badgers, no animals of any sort. Having shone it right round the garden, I was just about to turn the torch off when:
*Sniff*
They're not subtle, badgers 
This one was *huge*. A really enormous badger, certainly the biggest I've ever seen, digging up worms and grubs (I assume) with a vast badger bum sticking up into the air, oblivious to everything.
Or so I thought: it could be a different all-new badger, in fact, because this one didn't like the torch much (last year's badgers hardly noticed it). He lolloped off, then paused and turned round for one of those three-quarter 'check me now, Attenborough' type shots. Then he left.
Left for now that is 
I'm so glad there are badgers still out there! Put a real lift in the end of the day, that has 
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Latest reply: Sep 9, 2005
I'm On the Front Page!
Posted Aug 24, 2005
All right, I know that's probably not a big deal to lots of people who've written dozens of entries but I've found the whole process quite exciting (and I may have oversmilied above as a consequence 
).
Having been here for nearly two years, I thought it was about time I wrote something for the guide itself - and here it is:
A5103271
Of course, you could always access it ... through the front page! (have I already mentioned that?)
(Memo to self: if this ever happens again, try to be a bit cooler next time 
)
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Latest reply: Aug 24, 2005
Rubbish Bees
Posted Jun 12, 2005
Haven't seen any badgers so far this year, but I thought it was time for a nature update anyway.
I have been much pestered by bees and wasps - mostly bees - in recent weeks, which is one of the hazards of working near an open window (which is in turn one of the drawbacks of smoking a lot; not one of the principal drawbacks to smoking a lot, obviously, but a drawback nevertheless and a near-at-hand one at that).
Anyway - the bees are rubbish. They're just not up to it. And the wasps aren't much better. We either need new bees, or the bees need to find some sort of motivation, a new lease of life - because, at present, they're just not cutting it.
The bee in question came buzzing around the window, in standard bee fashion, but then stopped off on the window-sill before he'd even begun and did that strange abdominal 'panting' thing that bees do. It looked knackered. The effort of getting up to a first-floor window had clearly worn it out. So instead of flying through the open window and menacing me (which is, after all, its job), it tried to crawl through the gap where the hinges are instead. In other words, it was trying to *walk* in and menace me, which just isn't very menacing.
It got stuck. It sat there, pinioned between the hinges and looked up at me as though to ask whether it really had to go through with it, whether there was really any point, whether I couldn't just consider myself menaced and it could get on with something else (a long lie down of some sort, presumably).
But then it rallied. It had a moment of self-awareness and it started buzzing angrily.
'Ah ha' I thought, 'here we go, this bee is going to start acting like a bee now, hooray for the bee.'
All it succeeded in doing was flipping itself over onto its back and it lay there for a bit, panting again. Then it started buzzing again, rolled over a couple of times - and fell off the windowsill.
Bees just aren't supposed to do that. I mean, fall off things: it's just not very 'bee'. I waited for a tiny thud ... but, after a second or so, there was a buzz and slowly the bee lumbered back into the air and meandered off, straining and wheezing.
Is anybody else finding this with their bees? Are modern bees just rubbish, or is there something more sinister going on?
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Latest reply: Jun 12, 2005
Busy-ness
Posted Oct 22, 2004
RL is keeping me so busy at the moment, I seem to be getting on here only every few days or so and, even then, I'm just on for about half an hour - in which there's time only to scoot around going 'Hi!' three or four times - before I have to flop off and go to bed (which I'm about to do right now 
)
So, hoping everyone is all right, staying 
, etc.
Don't even have any badger news. They seem to have gone. San Tropez, perhaps.
Discuss this Journal entry [121]
Latest reply: Oct 22, 2004
I don't know why, but this really made me smile
Posted Oct 1, 2004
You might have seen it before, mind:
http://home.tiscali.nl/multicom/DaSchop/Cursor.html
Discuss this Journal entry [16]
Latest reply: Oct 1, 2004
Trin Tragula
Researcher U244483
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