A bit of excitement

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Yesterday Little One went to a friend’s house after school, and later my partner went to pick her up while I finished some work in the garden. Not long afterwards I got an urgent ‘phone call: ‘Can you run down the road and pick up a slow worm?!’ I dropped my tools and ran down the road to find my partner and Little One standing over an agitated slow worm they had rescued from a cat. My partner couldn’t bring himself to pick it up as it was far too snake-like (slow worms are actually legless lizards, but they look a lot like small snakes and he has a snake phobia). Little One couldn’t pick it up as it was far too wriggly. I scooped it up and managed to avoid dropping it although it was wriggling about very vigorously. But then I dropped it into my pocket and it immediately calmed down and lay there curled around a pencil and seemed quite happy in the warm darkness while we walked home. The cat was not happy and let us know in no uncertain terms by vigorously lashing its tail. We were not sure where would be a safe place to leave it; not near the road and away from cats but warm. In the end we settled on the flower bed on the south-west side of the house – plenty of cover, lots of dead leaves and quite sunny. When I lifted him (it was a male, distinguished by the colouration) out of my pocket he was very keen to be off and literally jumped out of my hand and disappeared among the leaves. I hope he will find a suitable spot to settle down in our garden All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2023.