Poddys Rambles On

Two rats in our garden! One of the perils of putting bird food (or in our case fox food) out is that it can attract rats. Unfortunately our neighbours on both sides as well as at the back have rats in their garden and it's hard to keep them out of ours. We do try and block the holes in the fences and to prevent them digging underneath them, but you can only do so much.  While we occasionally get one rat snatching fox food, this was a rare time when there are two rats at the same time and one was a really big one. Hope you enjoy the video and if you do, please subscribe to my wildlife channel.

Even though the weather so far this Spring in the UK has been pretty dire, we do have some things to be grateful for. It's been pretty dismal so far this year in many ways, with a full lockdown due to Covid from Christmas up to a few weeks ago, so we couldn't go anywhere even if we wanted to. Then the weather has been cold, wet and windy, so we had no desire to go out either. However, even though this year hasn't been a great one so far for the weather, I for one am really grateful that this time last year we had exceptional weather for a long period of time. As the Covid restrictions were beginning in the UK towards the end of March 2020 and people were starting to work from home, I was shocked to hear that I was being placed on furlough as from 1st April. My first reaction was shock and horror, but it didn't take me too long to realise that even though I was on 80% of my salary we were financially secure, for a while at least and with the weather by the beginning of A

 Well it's been a funny old year 2020 hasn't it! I mean "funny" as in  "strange" of course, not humorous, which it hasn't been for the most part. Things all started off well enough, other than this virus that was affecting people in China. Then, before we knew it, the thole world had been caught up in Covid-19 and it was panic stations as countries either tried to get hold of PPE equipment, or just tried to fob it off as a hoax or deny it. Sadly, 9 months later, some people still think Covid-19 is a myth. I think there are far more though, who would admit it's not, having lost someone they love or at least someone they know to it. Of course with Covid-19 came the lockdowns, limiting where people could travel, who they could meet up with etc and along with that the panic buying as people feared that the stores woudl run out of essential items, like toilet paper. Naturally they did, but not because of supply problems, instead just because of greedy peo

We have lived in our house for the last 5 years, and it was built in the 1950's, so the gardens in the area are for the most part fairly mature, and there are still a few patches of woodland around. As a result, we do from time to time see wildlife in our garden, notably foxes and occasionally hedgehogs, but the big holes that were dug in the flower bed at the side of the house this summer, added to the fact that holes had been made in several fence panels, made us wonder if we had a badger visiting. With my birthday coming up, and both of us being very curious, we decided together that a good gift would be a wildlife camera, so that we could leave it outside with a timer set, and find out for sure what was coming into our garden. Well, the results have been very enlightening, with some of our questions answered on the very first night, and I decided to create a Wildlife Category on the blog that Debbie and I had created 6 years ago and which I have allowed to fall by the

Isn't it amazing how a two week vacation seems like a long time, but no sooner has that vacation begun than it's time to go home again. My Florida vacation has just gone by so fast, I can't believe I have been here for two weeks already, and tomorrow night it's time for that long lonely flight back to London from Miami again. It's really hard only being able to see my daughters once a year, and with the cost of flights escalating every year, it makes the trip harder to afford each time. My online earnings have dropped in the last year for a number of reasons, including changes in Google, several sites closing down, and my struggling to focus on writing as much as anything, so I really need to knuckle down and look into finding ways to boost my earnings again, otherwise it's possible the trip won't happen next year. If you haven't had to be apart from your kids for a long time, it's hard to understand just how difficult that is emotionally,

Next weekend I am off to Florida for two weeks on my annual trip to see my girls, and although as a frequent traveller I was always prepared for my trips both mentally and physically well in advance, in recent years I have found that just trying to get everything ready for a trip becomes very stressful. My self-diagnosed A.D.D. makes me very forgetful as well as prone to stopping in the middle of doing one thing and starting another.  This doesn't help at all when you are trying to make sure that you have everything ready to take with you and that you don't forget anything. Of course the best solution is to make a list, and while I have done this in my head dozens of times over the last month or so, I only physically started making my list yesterday, and then added (hopefully) all the things I had forgotten this morning. It's the important things that I have trouble with every year is finding my American credit cards and bank cards. I don't use these in the UK, an

I wonder how many of you realised that today is Friday 13th? Not only that, tonight will be a full moon as well. It doesn't worry me, but I do imagine that those who are superstitious could find tonight a little bit stressful. Just think of all those werewolves that might be prowling around outside, making you tremble or shiver with every creak or sound that your house makes. Or if you look out the window and look at the moon, is that shadow a witch, or maybe just a bat flying past, which of course is just perfectly natural in many parts of the world. Personally, I hope that the sky will be clear tonight, so that I can get my telescope out and try to view the full moon. My wife bought me a telescope for Christmas 18 months ago, but since then either it's been cold, overcast, or we have been busy, so I haven't really been able to use it, or everything has been fine except that from outside our kitchen door, which is where I put the telescope, by the time the moon has risen i