WE think we have coined a new term, Dove Whisperer. We put out wild bird seed every day, a little at the edge of the Hide and the rest outside. It attracts a wide range of species, all keen to take advantage of the free welfare meals. We get mossies, various weavers, manikins, chats, and doves, lots of doves.
The doves are quiet and dignified, unlike the mossies. They come in and peck around a bit and sometimes advance across the Hide until they are at the front door and then they frequently trot over the threshold and into the cottage.
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The other day one did exactly that (these are laughing doves, by the way, although we get others too), made a right turn and ended up in my study. It’s a small space, not much room to manoeuvre, even for a dove.
It panicked, whacked itself against the high bookcases, the net-curtained windows (none of which, if opened, would have allowed it an easy escape route), and of course the curtain rails. I tried to ease it out, indicating the obvious exit with my walking stick.
I asked my wife for the net (more in a moment) tried to net it and failed. Eventually I suggested my wife have a try. I backed out of the scene and left my wife with the net and the dove.
Within moments there was a triumphal yelp, I was called to witness the dove perched on the edge of the net, being safely transported out of my study, across the Hide and so to freedom. My wife claimed she was a Dove Whisperer.
And now that net. It’s one of those that the children buy down at the beach. For us, its original use was for capturing interlopers in the house – frogs, spiders, crickets, geckos, etc.
It’s proved its weight in whatever as a useful household tool. Sadly, in the hands of children on the beach and at the rock pools, they have had led to the almost total elimination of any life at all in those pools. This is a shame, but perhaps they should be standard issue for Dove Whisperers.
And now, there is a drinking problem in the Indian state of Bihar. The state became the first to ban all alcohol last year and since the ban, nearly a million litres of the stuff has been confiscated by the police, but there is a problem with this, the confiscated liquor has disappeared from police storage depots across the state.
Authorities are not amused and have accused the police of either drinking the confiscated goods or of selling it on the black market. The police, however, have an answer to the accusation, they allege that it is rats in the storage facilities that have been at the grog.
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Nearly a million litres of alcohol consumed by rats in just a year? They are going to have to start breathalysing either the police or the rats.*
*The Week: The Best of the British and Foreign Media.
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