On evenings when the moon is full...

 I've been taking photos of skulls made by Vicious Noodles. 
This one inspired a little poem that I added to a skull photo taken on the eve of the full moon.

The Scrap Mag

My experimental foray into minimalistic music creation has found its way onto The Scrap Mag. Jolly good!

Making A Hedgehog Feeding Station

I've been feeding garden hedgehogs outside for years, but this year I decided to build a hedgehog feeding station because of the large number of cats in the local area. I was putting food out last year up until early December, but because of the cats, I was putting a lot of mealworms out, and not so many cat biscuits. 

During this time, I found a young hoglet, that weighed in at only 500g which is much too small for a hedgehog to survive hibernation; ideally they should be at least 700g. If they go into hibernation without enough fat on them, they will not survive the winter. I took the hoglet to Withington Hedgehog Rescue and told them about my dilemma with the cats. They suggested that I build a hedgehog feeding station, which has the added advantage of enabling you to leave some dry catfood available through the winter, for any occasions when the hedgehogs might wake up for a short while to seek out food.

I also learned that whilst the hedgehogs love mealworms, it's best not to provide too many as the hedgehogs will happily eat the mealworms to the exclusion of everything else. I have noticed that the hedgehog will pick out the mealworms during its first visit of the evening, then will return later on to eat the biscuits, presumably if there's been nothing better available in the undergrowth (although the garden is FULL of snails, and is chemical free). 

There is a lot of advice online about what food to put out for hedgehogs but do remember that the old wives' tale about them liking bread and milk is a dangerous myth as they are lactose intolerant. Bread and milk will make them ill. I've offered a variety of foodstuffs in my hedgehog café including hard boiled egg, which got a big 'no thanks' as well as crushed unsalted peanuts and sunflower hearts. Dry, chicken flavoured cat biscuits with a sprinkling of mealworms seems to be the favourite. Even the snails like them. 

So, that's enough about what to feed the hedgehogs. Here's a slideshow that I made showing you how to make a place to feed them.  Please also make sure that you leave drinking water available for hedgehogs. I haven't put the drinking water inside the feeding station as the hedgehogs walk through everything and can make a right mess, but there is a bowl of water immediately outside the box. 

I tried to find instructions online on how to cut the hole as DIY isn't my strong point. In the event, I just went for it and stabbed into the box with a sharp knife before using scissors, which probably isn't the best method. However, if you read the comments beneath the video via youtube there are some helpful tips from Lorcan Adrain, who says,

"An easy way to cut the entrance is to drill a hole in each of the four corners.  You need a fast drill and some wood.  Put the wood against the plastic and drill through the plastic into the wood. 
You can use a bit of cardboard cut to 10cm  x 10cm as a template and mark the corners with a permanent maker.
Use just a junior hacksaw blade (£1.50 for 10) and saw from hole to hole."

Useful links

BRITISH HEDGEHOG PRESERVATION SOCIETY

Warrington Hedgehog Forum

Hedgehog Street

This hog no longer needs to sit in its dinner to keep the cats away!

He's only making plans for Boris

So, London mayor Boris Johnson has gone ahead and bought a water cannon for London without consulting the home secretary...

He's only making plans for Boris

wolf in clown clothing he's everyone's chum

buffoon buys a cannon - all harmless fun

reclaim the streets from the plebs and the scum

affable, laughable chimp with a gun

when taken to task affects naughty boy

bearing to riffs re. the next hosepipe ban

thinks us too half soaked to see through the ploy

power by stealth, it's all going to plan

circus confetti won't  wash anymore

nor will a balloon to comb a  man's hair

who thinks he's a shoo-in cleaning the floor

of all in his path to be Tory heir

apparent despite his bumbling schtick

we know he's transparent; he thinks we're thick

©Helên Thomas 12/6/14

Is this the most useless hedgehog in the history of hedgehogs ever?

Noise Experiment 1

This is the tale of a solitary old man, who lives near the edge of a coniferous forest, next to a spirit lake. Here he passes his time using a lathe to craft beautiful artifacts. The spirits of the undead, who cannot find peace, bring him their long bones to fashion into new treasures. As he does so, the lathe exudes a strange music as the troubled spirits are finally laid to rest.

Experimental noise made using Korg Monotron Duo, a sample of a church bell and audacity software.

Video created 20th September 2018

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poem about everything

I've been noodling about, and creating some music, while having no synths or software to speak of; that's Owen's department and he keeps it all locked in a vault in Tingle Towers, whereas I only have my laptop. I've also been trying to get to grips with audacity, the music mixing freeware that you can use to record, mix and put effects on.

Anyway, the results of my experiment with austerity audacity can be heard below, accompanied by an animation evocative of whatever plague it was that saw off Mr Blobby. It will all make sense when you click 'play'.
 

Tiny weenie snail

As a contrast to yesterday's beast of an obese slug, today I offer you a very small and oh so cute snail. Why is it that snails are cute, even the slimy bits, simply because they sport their own mobile home on their backs?

I've always had a soft spot for snails. There was always an abundance of them round and about my Taid's (Grandfather's) cottage where we used to stay in summer holidays as kids. I'm not a supporter of horse racing or any other sports involving animals, but snail racing still seems to be a fairly innocent childhood activity. As long as they're returned safely to the undergrowth afterwards. Maybe the snails don't agree. Anyway, here's today's mini-beast with obligatory 50 pence piece for scale.

    Jon, I got my crocs into shot especially for you! xx

The biggest slug I have ever seen in my life...new world record.

It's been a bumper year for slugs what with the rain, the rain and the additional rain, and today I saw what I do believe to be the biggest slug I have ever seen (in my life so far). 

FYI that is a size 7 croc.

I also tried measuring it but it deliberately went all short and fat. 

The '50p for scale' trick didn't really give the desired effect of scale either, but I think you get the gist. 

I do think that this slug has even surpassed the big black slug referred to in the blog post below.
I reckon it was at least 6 - 7 inches depending on how much squidging it was doing.

THE SLUGS ARE EVOLVING! 

Myspace blogpost from August 2007

The other morning, I looked out of the window and saw, on the lawn, what I later realised was the biggest slug I have ever seen in my life. It was humungous. When I first spotted it, I momentarily thought that it was a piece of hedgehog poo.

I  soon realised that it wasn't hedgehog poo as it was moving. It was also far too large to be hedgehog poo, well, not unless there's a big bruiser of a hedgehog out there that spends its night times denting bull bars on SUVs for fun whilst crossing the road eating kebabs. Otherwise, hedgehog poo of that magnitude would have to be the product of some poor, deflated balloon of a hedgehog that had just done the turd of its life.

I still wasn't entirely sure what the thing was, so I rushed outside to have a closer look. It was definitely a slug. I happened to have a Body Shop emery board in my hand at the time, so I used it to measure the slug. You're probably not aware that Body Shop emery boards are the standard unit of measurement in these parts because we're opposed to Europe. The slug came out at two thirds of the length of a Body Shop emery board, which is about 5 inches or approx 13cm to normal people. I don't really like slugs, but I had to admire this one glistening like liquorice in the morning dew; gliding leisurely through the grass with the ease and grace of a tall ship on a benevolent sea. It was quite serene. I mentioned it to someone later that day and they said, "Did you salt it?" The answer was, "No."

I couldn't bring myself to kill something that had managed to avoid predation long enough to grow to two thirds of the length of a Body Shop emery board. It was magnificent. Even the blackbirds were giving it a wide berth. So, I left it grazing on the lawn like a small, deformed, slippery horse even though it was probably on its way to decimate the hostas.

Here's a poem that I wrote some years ago as you can probably tell by the film star references:

Slug Poem

I'm a slug and I'm all right,

Because I'm an hermaphrodite,

I'm lots of fun, at both ends,

So it doesn't matter if I've got no friends,

But I have!

Coz I'm gorgeous; I'm the slug Raquel Welch,

And all the other slugs' little horny bits

Go wild when I go 'squelch',

Sssccchhhhhlllllooooooo-ar-op,

But please don't pour salt on me

Because I will go 'POP',

Ssshhhhllllloooooo-arrrrr-oooop,

And if you pour salt when I'm with my friends,

We'll end up as a POP group,

At the end of my life's silvery road,

Sodium chloride meets slug,

I implode.

P.S. Did I ever tell you about the time I nearly cooked a slug in a pan of pasta? Maybe some other time then.

330 Words Blog

I stumbled across this blog whereby you have to take a photo then use it as a stimulus to write a very short story. I had a go myself and the result is here: http://330words.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/notice-board-written-by-helen-thomas/

I don't really write stories and prose much even though I've been asked to judge other people's short stories, and have touched on short story writing in some Year 6 workshops that I've delivered in the past. So, it only seems fitting that I have a go myself from time to time! I quite liked this 330 words idea as a simple writing exercise. The blog is open to anyone to submit so it's worth giving it a whirl.