Not so wild wildlife

Remember the stoat/ferret/whatever incident at the backend of May? Through DH's conversations with our neighbours, we have discovered the night after Missy and I's encounter, it gatecrashed a bar-b-q in our next door neighbours' garden.

Bethany trapped it under a washing basket and called Tom, who moved into one of the houses over the road a few months ago. Apparently he keeps stoats and it turned out to be one of his tame ones that had escaped a couple of days earlier. Tom says it was starving when he got it back. It wasn't charging at me to attack my ankles, it probably thought the human was going to feed him!

Tom has three dogs of his own and that's why it wasn't intimidated by Missy. I feel really bad that I let the poor thing go hungry another day but how on earth was I to know? As an additional plus, I feel very glad to have found out that the wildlife in my garden aren't really all out to get me and I can now stop taking magazines out at night for protection!

(Photo courtesy of Admin at www.freedigitalphotos.net).

Couple of commissions

Here are a couple of new necklaces that were commissioned by customers and hopefully they should be collected from my stall tomorrow.

The above was a very straightforward commission. A customer saw one of my Aeolian Treasure necklaces and loved it but she wanted it all in black. I therefore offered to make another necklace, replacing the turquoise gemstone chips with haematite.

This one was not so straightforward.

The customer asked for a mainly black and red necklace, she was drawn to the Red Jagged Edge necklace but wanted more orange in it and much longer so it could be worn doubled if required but would just go straight over the head when worn full length. The photograph doesn't really show much difference between the reds and oranges, but they are there when you meet the necklace in person! My offer this time was to see what I could come up with and the customer would be under no obligation to buy it if she didn't like it. I only make jewellery I like myself, that way if no-one else does, I can have it! So whilst I'm reasonably certain the first necklace will be well received, I have no idea whether this one will be!

Whilst I'm blogging, I thought I would mention a second freaky wildlife incident that happened to me last night. I was letting the dog out last thing at night before going to bed. I had the outside light on with the door open; I had a copy of Gardening Which? in my hand that I was planning to read in bed before going to sleep.

Suddenly I heard a commotion and looked up to see Missy and another creature squaring up to each other. It looked like a stoat but I think it was a bit bigger than the ones I saw playing in the snow earlier this year. It was so dark and as they were outside the arc of the light, I couldn't be sure but it might've have been a ferret. Either way, both are predators and have a nasty bite and I had visions of having to take Missy to the vet yet again. Despite the difference in size between the two of them, it was impressive that the stoat/ferret/whatevever wouldn't back down and wasn't at all intimidated by the fact that Missy was at least 10 times bigger!

I therefore ran over, picked her up and started to go back into the house and I noticed that the stoat/ferret/whatever was still there; it wasn't intimidated by me either and then ... then ... it started to charge towards me! In alarm I threw my copy of Gardening Which? at it and fled back into the house with Missy growling and grumbling at me in my arms. It was only 4-5 yards away but I slammed the door shut and then looked out of the glazed top and the stoat/ferret/whatever was lurking about right outside the door, it must've followed me! My heart was pumping like mad, after realising that it couldn't get me, this demented creature then went back to my copy of Gardening Which? shook it about a bit, got under it, chucked it up in the air and then ran off into the night leaving me shaking! I made DH go rescue my magazine (telling him to be very careful - all he did was laugh when I told him about it). It took me ages to get to sleep ... I think I prefer the kind of wildlife that visits the garden during the day time!