The Monkey House

Speedy is up.  Sort of.

With spring so cold and late he wisely stayed deep in his box in the shed way past his normal wake-up time of late March.  A week ago, I moved the box into the greenhouse so he could get a bit of warmth to help him start.

When I took a peek, I discovered he had clawed his way out of the small box of straw (in which he returned from bugshaw and tamaranth's where he spent last summer in comfort and luxury) and got into the big, outer box of straw.  This is not ideal since the whole point of the double box is to keep him in the middle of the insulation.  By following his instinct to go deeper when cold he ended up down in one corner of the whole package, almost outside the straw.  But since the big box was on top of an old rabbit hutch and inside the shed, maybe he actually knew what he was doing and found the warmest least chilly place.  Either way, he managed to rip an impressive hole through some quite tough cardboard and gaffer tape, all while supposedly hibernating.  Final proof of what I've suspected for a while: he doesn't hibernate  like a mammal but remains quite active, digging his way up and down underground as the temperature varies.

Anyway, today he came out of the box (with only a little encouragement).  I was all for giving him a gentle start and a day or two in the greenhouse, but musique_monkey wanted to put him in his new enclosure on the lawn (constructed at great effort and expense) so that's where he is.  We left him in the rabbit hutch on a big pile of straw, but he looked as though he was starting to move out.  He has some lettuce but probably won't feel like eating until he's been up a week or two.

If he decides to adopt the hutch we will either have to take the letters off it or change his name to Sooty.

Something very odd is happening to themonkeycats.  

When we lived in central Cambridge, Leicester was the mighty hunter.  He was never very good at birds, luckily, but could easily catch several mice a day.  Meanwhile Humbug lunged uselessly at squirrels, admired Leicester's mice (but lost any he was left in charge of) and proudly brought home an assortment of sticks, polystyrene and litter, which he would haul over the trellis and build into trophy piles on the patio.  Now he's morphing into The Beast of Girton, out all day prowling the undergrowth.  We thought the woodpigeon was fluke and the mouse was impressive, but I just looked up to see him lolloping home with a magpie clamped in his jaws!  It flew off when I stopped him bringing it in through the window and is sitting in a tree apparently unharmed but very, very indignant.  i think this may be war.

Leicester is puzzled but grudgingly impressed.   Not to mention grateful since he was allowed to eat the woodpigeon and the mouse.  As far as I know, he hasn't caught anything himself yet though he spends a lot of time watching the bird table in hope. I suspect he'll learn to catch the bunnies at the bottom of the garden, but I'm not sure he even knows about them yet. He's well settled now, though.  He's successfully seen off the 6 cats from the farm.  It was all very civilised with hardly any body contact, but it's now established that Leicester is allowed to go where he likes, at least in his own garden and the student house on the other side.  When he meets any of the others they either withdraw to the farm or exchange polite chit chat about the weather.

The Beast of Girton doesn't really bother with cat encounters.  Sometimes he gets attacked by Charles, the top farm cat, but he knows he can scream for help and Leicester will come running to protect him.  Maybe the dead birds are a kind of payment...

We're getting settled into the new monkey house and musique_monkey is feeling much, much better. This is all very good.

"( But what you really want to hear about is cats, isn't it? )

Flood in cellar: fixed.
It was us. Plumber eventually found a faulty bit of copper pipe under the very middle of the kitchen floor (after he'd taken up most of the rest of the floor). I got quite wet just leaning over to look at the hole.

Spidermonkey's options interview: survived
Head did not bollocks either of us and it looks as though he can probably do his first choices--basically loadsa science plus art and music.  Probably.

Work: frantic
Behind with tutorial prep.  Huge pile of urgent marking arrives at noon tomorrow.  Large urgent translation arrived at 3 today...

Garden: ready for spring
We painted 10 panels of trellis green.  Now we just need Paul to come and fix them to the top of the walls before the plants grow any taller.

Kittens: still cute
They've been exploring the rest of the house and getting trained in helping apes have breakfast, watch TV, answer the doorbell etc.  Have some pics...


Humbug being a computer lapcat


Leicester investigating the zip on my jumper

When we woke up, everything was white, the back door was open, and there was a note on the table from squirrelmonkey saying, "I may be gone some time. Playing outside in snow."

Now both schools are closed and there are excited monkeys of assorted sizes having snowball fights everywhere.

The garden looks like this.



(Note no footprints although squirrelmonkey was out there quite recently assembling the dirty snowball by the shed. It is falling FAST.)