Singing as the Darkness Lifts 15/01/2024
Photo of blue-footed booby x 2 via vecteezy.com
Today's photo is of two blue-footed booby birds and by the end of this blog you may be able to work out why.
Today smells like cold margarine tubs. There is no ground frost, but there is a sense in the air of it being cold enough for snow. To counteract this I showered with a warming egg nog shower gel that my sister bought me for Christmas and the contrast was wonderful.
Today is what I am calling ‘Itchy and Scratchy Day’. I have been hearing a scuttling in the loft, and today we have someone from a pest control company coming out to help us identify what is causing it.
When the scuttling noise first started my wife did not really hear it as much as me. I paid it quite a lot of attention and could even tell you what times of day it had been happening. Sometimes it seemed to be one creature with a clear lunchtime and bedtime routine and now I think it of as two creatures who have had their circadian rhythm disrupted. The other night for example, at two in the morning, one of them appeared to be rolling a marble back and to above our heads in the bedroom. The one thing I had been sure of before this was that it was just one creature that liked to run to and fro twice a day in the space above the television.
The noise originally started before Christmas, but had seemed to stop for a while, and I didn't go into the loft because I was choosing to think it might have gone away. We gave the noise all sorts of possible explanations – our next door neighbour plugging in Christmas lights (this sort of fitted with the regular 9pm scuttle, and I wanted so much for it to be this). I even went out and looked for herring gulls or crows on the roof when I heard it during the day because it reminded me of the noise birds used to make walking on the roof of my attic bedroom when I was little. On these occasions I convinced myself that it could be birds and that it was always the noise of me opening the front door that meant I didn’t see them because it scared them off. I briefly entertained a plan of sitting in a chair opposite my house to survey the roof situation, but hey it has been a bit cold and I think I knew it was not external bird life.
The day I put my head in the loft I felt a bit scared (in fact I thought I might fall off the ladder if I saw IT), but I saw no pests or sign of pests and there was no smell apart from the loft space smell of rafters and air. I reassured myself that I had looked and it wasn’t there, but I knew in my heart that the only way to be sure would have been to actually go up there and look properly. I am almost capable of going into the loft, but we have no fixed loft ladder, no boards, a lot of insulation, and I think my ability to actually catch a creature might be slightly lacking hence the need to call in an expert. Otherwise I sort of picture me feeling excited to find two lively squirrels and a whole pyramid of acorns or a couple of mice in a cosy nest of insulation and chewed up rafters and then falling through the plasterboard ceiling.
There was a night last week when it scuttled big time and even my wife could hear what I had been talking about. The other time in the week when it had made the loudest noise was just as I was entering a coaching zoom with a client and it was some of the best practice I had had for leaving myself behind on entry to the coaching space!
There is a great lesson in all of this for learning to stop just hoping that things go away if you ignore them and this also resonates with the ‘eat the frog’ analogy. I am often able to call that to mind when needing to tackle jobs, but somehow it had eluded me for the loft scenario. I googled the eat the frog saying after seeing a Linked In post this week because I couldn’t remember the origin. Sources on the internet attribute it to Mark Twain. Here are a couple of versions:
“If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.”
"Eat a live toad first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day."
Once I know
what it is it might even become a cute thing that just needed to be moved on
rather than a pest. I am pretty sure it is not a badger (my sister’s
suggestion) or an Oompa Loompa (my nephew’s idea) or two blue-footed boobys.
I am reminded now of a poem I wrote for children that captures the true story of a young person who did not eat the crusts from their Sunday toast...
ANSWERING MY MOTHER
I had meant to move them,
remembered that I needed to move them.
Then the day distracted me
and bedtime was just for sleeping
and a new day was coming down for breakfast
and putting the television on.
Not even when she went upstairs that morning
did I think of it again.
Until she shouted, I had totally forgotten.
We could have had mice.
My forgetful mind made my heart sink.
The cry worsened;
Rats! We could have had rats.
The four flights of stairs between us
only gave me time to swallow
and stare.
I had meant to move them.
I had planned to wrap them in newspaper,
like chips,
take the package quietly to the backyard,
unclip the dustbin lid,
lay it inside.
Rats! We could have had rats.
If you didn’t want to eat them, that’s OK.
You didn’t need to hide them under there.
For months I had been pushing
Sunday crusts under the bed.
Too dry. Too dark.
I only liked soft, buttered, marmalade bites.
I ate up to the edge;
felt ungrateful for not eating the rest
so I slid them under the bed.
If I had put them in my bin
she would have known my ingratitude.
They’re mouldy. The carpet’s mouldy.
The bed men are coming and we’ve got mould.
We could have had rats.
Why didn’t you just bring them downstairs?
My answer wouldn’t come.
Comments
Post a Comment