Town Mouse or Country Mouse?

Hare Activity, a Trip to the Toon and the question, ‘Who Did that Poo?’

We’ve had an exciting week, but one of contrast with an abundance of wildlife and adventures in the town, or should I say toon – it was Newcastle and as I write the toon army are away at Wembley. Howay the lads! We’ve had hare activity, a trip by train to the Centre for Life and the discovery of a strange poo which has prompted the question, much to the amusement of my granddaughters, who or what did that poo?

The hare activity came first. A friend, Mike asked on my Instagram if by ‘hare activity’ I meant bonking. No Mike, though once I’d retreated to bed with my morning cuppa and left them to it, then they may well have been at it. We’ve been blessed with a leveret in the garden for several years on the trot. The first time I discovered one of these brown balls of fluff, I was bending down to pick red tulips to take indoors and put my hand on something soft and brown. Nestled in amongst the juicy stems was a tiny leveret which stayed perfectly still. Last year a leveret made its bed underneath the front room window in a sunny spot in the front garden.

I feel very blessed to have hares in the garden: large and honey brown with darker tips on the end of their long ears, they bound across the decking in the twilight, scatter across the grass when I’m hanging up washing and bound over fields as we walk down the lane. Mike, a local lad and he of the bonking comment has with his partner, named his little baby Arlen, meaning land of the hare.

Molly finds a hare in the garden in my novel, The Rewilding of Molly McFlynn. Molly has been sent to live with her bohemian grandparents in the wilds of Northumberland and it is this tussle between her love of the town and her perceived boredom with life in the sticks that the novel opens with. In this snippet, Nan has asked Molly to go and pick some tulips:  

‘I found the tulips, and as I bent down to pick them, I spotted something small and brown, huddled down in the ground. I ran in to the kitchen.

               ‘I’ve found something. Come and see!’ I motioned for Nan to come quietly, and I took her to the patch of tulips, gently pulling back the leaves.

               ‘Ah, that’s a leveret, Nan said, ‘a baby hare. Wonderful creatures. Hares often come into your life when you need to work something out.’

The Rewilding of Molly McFlynn, pub 28 October 2023 by the Book Guild

  On Thursday I took my daughter and two granddaughters by train to Newcastle, destination: the Centre for Life Science Museum. I hadn’t been on a train since before the pandemic. The girls entertained the carriage with squeals of delight and as the train sped off, two-year-old Luna turned me, eyes twinkling and bouncing on her seat, ‘We’re on a train, Nanny’. They ate their snacks, did colouring, played I-spy and then pressed their noses to the window as the train crossed the Tyne, giving perfect views of Newcastle’s iconic bridges.

It took me back to taking two-year-old Tom, my son who is now 30, on the train down south to visit my parents. Like my granddaughters, he was brought up living very rurally, high in the north Pennies with fields as his playground. We lived down a rough track and had the most amazing views up and down the Weardale valley. Seated in a carriage on the Thames Link overground train, young Tom chatted to all the other passengers, most of whom did neck extensions and tried their best to avoid eye contact with this chatty young lad.

‘Look mummy, he was heard to say, ‘them’s funny barns! They’re all squashed together,’ as we flew past high-rise blocks that were indeed all squashed together.

We were a happy bunch, walking along the pavement to The Centre for Life from Newcastle station, Luna sitting high on Nanny’s shoulders. Daisy shrieked, ‘a double-decker!’ and was rewarded but not one, but three orange, white and blue double-decker buses driving by. They must have seemed enormous to little Luna. Daisy wanted to play tag in the concourse – it must have reminded her of the schoolyard. The Centre for Life blew their little minds. It was big and bold and colourful and made of glass and metal: total culture shock to these country bumpkins who thanks to the pandemic, distance and cost had hardly ever visited town.

We quickly found an exciting machine with buckets and pulleys, levers and handles that the children could shovel little plastic grains into and pull, push and wind with other kids. It was great to see them interacting with children they didn’t know. Upstairs there was an excellent play area, with soft play, blocks, a very popular kitchen and shop area, a tree house and den, a tightrope, an art area, a story corner, wall art, a dressing-up box and a shadow wall. Downstairs there were interactive all sorts for older kids. There was so much to do! But by the afternoon it all became too much.

Apart from everyone overheating – had we really all needed to wear vests and woolly tights? Daisy was struggling with the play dynamics of some of the kids there, I had gone into teacher mode, patrolling the areas and giving some stern glares to some of the kids causing problems. Luna was charging off in all directions and Hannah and I were becoming increasingly anxious with the volume of people, level of noise, heat, and sensory overload of the place. I had not been anywhere as crowded as this for a very long time, and I wonder if the pandemic and lockdown have given me an even worse fear of crowds than I had before.

We decided to get an earlier train home. As town gave out to fields, we began to relax. Our train dropped us off at the little halt of Bardon Mill and we walked down the footpath in the chilly afternoon air and over the green bridge. The Tyne flowed beneath on its way back to Newcastle.

The poo question came the next day as the children played outside. Daisy in particular has a fascination with poo and can identify rabbit poo from sheep poo, but this was something else. Almost black, shiny and slug-like, this poo was not one I knew. I quickly googled hare poo – that would be small round pellets like a rabbit, so it was not our courting couple. I took a photo, measured its length and girth and tweeted said poo on my Twitter account, tagging Chris Packham as I know he has a penchant for poo. It could either be a fox or hedgehog came the reply. Inspect it closer! Does it have fragments of bone, feathers, fur or seeds? Nope! Does it smell strong with a musky smell? For this, I needed to get closer so yes, readers. I was on all fours with my nose two inches from the poo while the grandkids squealed with delight. No, it didn’t particularly smell. Then, Twitter informed me, it might be a hedgehog. How very exciting! And worrying – did this mean a hungry hedgehog coming out of hibernation early? We would need to seek advice. The grandchildren learnt that hedgehogs eat slugs and their poo looks like a slug. To a two- and five-year-old, this is brilliant!

We may not have double-decker buses, glass, metal and chrome, theatres, shops, nightlife, or restaurants, but we do have hares in the garden and hedgehog poo. I know what I feel more excited about. Give me the country any day.

 

Thanks for reading! I’ve a rendezvous next week at the Black Gate of Newcastle Castle, the very place Ann Watson, mother of Martha who Molly meets in the woods and one of fifteen women hung on the Town Moor was held awaiting trial on accusations of being a ‘wych’, which I hope will bring some exciting news about the book launch. As they say, watch this space…