Visitors

Of all our cats, Luna is the most natural hunter. Her speciality seems to be the very large grasshoppers that abound in the greenery at the back of us. I often rescue them and put them back out there, but sometimes she manages to munch through their rather tough skin, and then she is sick! The others don't move fast enough to catch much though they often join in with the game of playing with her spoils.

This week she out-did herself when I found her mewing gently in the kitchen, and there on the floor was this little fellow. My first thought was 'Oh dear. She's caught a ghecko'. I still think of them as chit-chats, the name we gave them in Cyprus. They are welcome visitors as they feed on mosquitoes and other flying bugs that annoy us all summer. I picked him up and he sat very still on my hand. I quickly realised this was no chit-chat. They move like grease lightening. He was probably in shock, and he had lost the end of his tail, either from this encounter or an earlier one. I wanted to take a photo so I could look him up on the internet and try to identify him, and while I was doing this he bit me! Now there's gratitude for you. I nearly gave him back to the cats I had just rescued him from. I have no idea whether or not lizards have teeth, but he could sure clamp on hard with his jaws for such a little fellow! The first thing I noticed was that unlike the gheckos that have suckers on each toe, enabling them to scamper across ceilings and up vertical walls, this little creature had long digits with a fierce claw on each one. He also had very distinctive colours and markings, and almost crocodile skin on the top of his head. After a long search I did identify him as an Algerian Psammodromus. The Spanish Psammodromus had quite different markings, but I suppose we are actually quite close to Algiers, so he wasn't too far away from home. I put him in a sunny spot outside and left him to recover.

The next day, to my surprise, Luna brought in a second one of these lizards. It was definitely a different one as it had a slightly longer tail and different injuries. I am not sure whether this one was going to survive, but I put him in a quiet spot and hoped for the best.

Luna was obviously having a good week, because yesterday, when i was sweeping through the house, I nearly swept up another visitor. This time it was a proper ghecko! Here he is. You can see he is really quite different. He didn't want to hang around to be looked at, but I managed to gently anchor his tail between my fingers just long enough to take this picture, and then I let him go outside, and he disappeared immediately.

I suppose some people would say I should let the cat have them and not interfer with nature, but Luna is only a baby and I am not sure she has enough sense to know what she can and can't eat, and somehow I can't just leave a defenceless little creature to die, not in my house anyway. Maybe one day she will learn not to bring her captives home. What she gets up to in next doors garden I have no idea, and I don't really want to know!

Man at work!

There are quite a few things that need to be done in and out of the house, some very minor and others more important, so I have drawn up a list of 'Things to do this year'! Chris hasn't seen the list yet, but he knows most of what's on it anyway, and this week he has tackled a couple of the more urgent tasks. We have had some very windy days lately and the roof of the dogs house was in danger of taking off. It is two layers of wired bamboo with thick black plastic sheeting between them. The top layer had lifted in the wind and frightened the dogs so we had them indoors for a couple of nights. So last week Chris went up the ladder to see what he could do. We had one metal bar left from what we bought to make the frame, and he has bolted that down across the front of the roof and it really holds it very strongly, but he also wanted to tie the back corner down. The roof isn't strong enough for him to kneel on so he had to put a second ladder across it to make a platform. It was all a bit precarious but he managed, with me hovering around below, though what I could have done if he'd fallen through I'm not at all sure! Anyway, Miki and Foxy are back in their house at night, and it's wind and rain proof again.

This week I asked Chris to tackle my washing line. I have a good strong pair of metal posts with four lines stretched between them. The lines are plastic coated wire and for some time now the plastic has been cracking and bits falling off. The exposed wire then goes rusty and it was getting hard to find a place to put the pegs without marking the clean washing. At the weekend, the wires started to fray and it really was an urgent task to replace all the lines. I found a bundle of the same plastic coated wire in a bright red, in the outside shed and it turned out to be enough for three of the lines. There is a good system of screwing bolts for adjusting the tension, but it was a bit of a pain to get it all threaded up. However with Chris on the job, and me as a helper on hand, we got it done. The old lines were white, but when we unscrewed the bolts and unfolded the ends, we found that it had originally been as red as the new one! I will have to have a hunt around the shops and try to find a bit more so I can have the last line replaced as well. Today I washed the bed linen and the new line held up with hardly any sag, so that's another good job done. I can cross it off my list now.

I'll leave you with this lovely picture of Luna in the orange tree. While Chris was working on my washing line I decided to pick a few more fruit from the trees next door that line the fence where we were. (The owner doesn't live there and she told me to help myself!) I was on the step stool to reach a few of the higher fruit when Luna suddenly appeared and she looked so cute, I just had to take her picture.