Whaaattt?

I have seen rats scampering past my doctor's surgery on three occasions. It's on a busy road junction. I once had to shut the car door quickly in case it jumped in.

 

I can remember driving into Southampton from the north towards the cruise terminal. As we passed along a raised section of the road, I saw that the grass verge alongside was covered in rats! Quite alarming at the time. To be honest, I don’t really mind rats as long as they stay outside the house. Funnily enough, we never see them here, they don’t come to eat the badgers supper, and haven’t caught sight of them on our night cameras, although we see plenty of field mice. No hedgehogs either. Maybe we just have too many local predators. We have seen plenty of owls, and they are much less common than rats.

 

There's a thought!

 

Would you still dislike fox hunting if it was an urban sport with tracksuit clad people that have just come out of betFred, on e-bikes and electric scooters, following their Staffordshire Bull terriers who had just flushed out some prey?

If the answer is yes then it's probably not a class thing.

 

One of the farmers I know has lost more lifestock to the local hunt than he ever has from foxes. The reson is the hunt just doesn't/didn't care about private land and boundaries and simply left the gates open to his land. He lives in the new forest and as the locals tend to drive at high speed, the animals were killed on the roads.

 

My grandmother had a small farm on Bodmin moor and had banned the hunt from crossing her land after previous bad experiences, even though she had lost a lot of her best poultry to the foxes. They still crossed it, and stirred up one of her horses who tried to jump a barbed wire fence to join them and was badly injured.

 

That's why lots of land owner have banned the hunts because of wire being cut gates left open, i've even seen sheep go through 2 lots of wire and a hedge all because the hounds were in the field, also why some land owner are banning the hunt is because they have to give them the ok to go on to their land but if the hunt would to breck the law then the land owner is also responsible,
1 farmer i know baned the hunt as he was haveing wire cut so he went down the field to see if it happened again but he came across a lady on horse back and she got left behind so she let rip at the farmer so farmer next day rang the hunt and said "you are now all banned from my land" he explained why and their answer was "if we know who you were it wouldn't have happen" he said "you have to respect every one"

 

Both of the large property owners out my way have on staff folks they call Woodmen, their job is to keep those rolling hills and valleys beautiful.

I had assisted one extremely rich folks once who had a full-time landscaper that had been living on a cottage on their vast acres for years, he had gotten because of age unable to do things. Those folks said he's like family and they paid for his total care in the nursing home I worked at.

The well known Garden near me, Longwood, (google if wish). Been open for many years, has little cottages with it, and the head Landscaper and some staff get to live for free in them. One of the daughters of the head Landscaper was a client of mine, she would love to tell stores about Mr. Dupont (the mulit-millionaire guy) who started the whole things. Anyway Joanne passed on about 10 years ago, a sweet soul.