Sherlock-Episode 8

 

After I jumped out of that Mini-Cooper I headed straight for the forest. I’d never seen anything like it, grasses and wildflowers so high I could skulk around in the undergrowth for hours without being spotted, but after a while the belly rumble got the better of me and I went in search of fodder.

 

Even with one eye I’m an ace fly catcher, so I swatted and batted my way through  the species for a couple of days, slugs and snails providing  a tasty alternative and very ooh là là. Stream water was much nicer than tap but my belly soon began to long for something that was not a pancrustacean hexapod invertebrate, aka insect or  a Mollusk aka snail. A rooster crowing drew me to a hen coop where a dozen or so hens clucked and strutted their stuff while the two roosters, big fellows with red crests, fought and crowed over their respective territories. It wasn’t long before I discovered a few abandoned eggs, my favourite fare.

 

 I'd always loved it when Mum took out the baking bowl and cracked an egg or two on the side of it , keeping aside a sup for me.... Mum… I did miss her. All her daft cooing and singing and endless worrying about lonesome little me, and I did miss swiping at Red’s long hair and standing on Longfellow’s tall, broad shoulders. I even missed Grump tipping me gingerly off his favourite chair in front of the tele, and for a tear jerk moment I was sentimentally distracted and didn’t notice the fox eyeing up a hen from the other side of the coop.

 

The brazen fellow was about to take the leap when I set up such a din that a wiry little woman came flying out of the nearby cottage waving a broomstick and flapping her pinny, chasing Mr Fox, at least for now, down the boreen.

 

“What a clever fellow you are, and only one eye!” she cackled. “Perhaps you’d like to join our little ménage?”

 

Now I was well versed in Grimm Fairytales and recognised that there was a fine line between a rustic matron and a witch but I decided to keep my options open and my eye alert and  so I  became the latest addition to a menagerie of twenty hens, two roosters, four donkeys, three dogs and four cats, including myself.

 

But I’d been an only cat and it’s hard to beat that. The attention. The treats. And those rooster crowings, despite the text book assertions that they usually occurred at dawn and dusk, punctuated my every escapade. So despite the decent grub, and with just a tad of regret, I took myself off in the direction of the nearby Boy Scout Camp, for with my one eye on an opt-out clause, I’d been doing reconnaissance missions in the area and had discovered the Summer training camp and realised that they had no mascot and no pets. So I was off again in search of Facebook fame and maybe even a Badger Badge.