We used to get cockchafers in Bristol where I used to live, up near The Downs, flying in through the open window on a warm night, crashing into my walls, once even knocking down a small picture, then onto the floor, where one would have to pick them up and return them to the outside. They're surprisingly heavy. How on earth they manage to fly, goodness knows: even bumble bees being a miracle in that respect. Shield bugs we don't have here in S London, but we do have the green type, same shape, same size. Clever little things, being able to match the foliage colour exactly! And grasshoppers always jump out onto me when I dead-head the roses. Beautiful slender creatures. We don't have frogs here - none that I have seen - and only ever one hedgehog - but we do have stag beetles. Fearsome though they look, those mandibles on the males are essentially for macho display and can only be moved slowly for grappling. The female can give a nasty nip; but, like all beetles, they only bite us if we enclose them in our hand. That said, they do have remarkably strong claws which dig in if you try removing one from your person. And so, birds such as the blackbirds, jays, woodpeckers (both types, here just 6 miles from Traf Sq!) and numerous jackdaws and rooks around here apart, urban foxes are the only predators of the slugs and snails. You could sometimes think you were in the countryside!
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One can get a bit sentimental about the animal kingdom, don't you think? I know I can. I took it as a personal compliment when a fox crossed my grass one night, and when a buzzard deigned to perch on a tree in my garden just last week. And, I show off my ants' nest to anybody that cares to look for a while.
I'm not too keen on the cats who loiter in the shrubs near the birds' feeding boxes, but one of them just loves me. And the heron who cleaned out a neighbour's pond won't be getting his photo taken again. The black flies, not the Freddie kind, that swarm about now in the hedge had me on antibiotics for a month, and every biting, stinging insect known to man has sampled my blood. I think I'm more on Heaney's wavelength when the chips are down, in that I do not subscribe to a general amnesty for all God's creatures.
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