Ever watched a squirrel try to
steal the fat-balls from your bird table?
Ever wondered what they do with them if they are successful in their
thieving? Well, here’s the truth about
what goes on out of sight in the world beneath our hedgerows...
Woodland Healer
Tamsyn Naylor
There was a flurry of noise as the flock of sparrows
rose up, like the sound of a sheet being shaken out of an upstairs window. One
quick hop and I was atop of the garden fence. A quick shuffle of the back legs
and I sprung across onto the bird table.
I flicked my tail in defiance before lowering the top
of my body over the edge, gripping to the wood with my back claws. As I
dangled, my front paws were free to work at my prize. I quickly lifted and
tugged at the close knit net until the spherical trophy came away. I jerked it
up, steadied myself and deftly regained my perch before making my way back into
the safety of the hedge.
Once through the hedge, I followed it for some
distance until the voices and sounds of the big ones faded away, reaching a
bramble covered bank side. The man with the newspaper had come out of his house
in pursuit of me, but was looking over the hedge still, I was long gone.
Pushing on through the paper like leaves made me breathless, I paused at the
rise of the hill, before rolling my prize down the slope. I gathered it up
again and made for a small patch of hawthorn scrub.
I startled her as I entered the thicket, her sharp
whiskered nose wrinkled as she blinked in the light from behind me. “Aahhh, at
last,” she said, as I lowered the ball within her reach, “We have waited a long
time for this.” I chewed into the side of the net, which then came apart easily
and the bundle lay exposed. “Let’s start a fire,” she said.
As the flames sparked into life around the ball, it
lit up the thicket, sparks dancing against the slender silver twigs. Around me
I could see the items of the hodgehegs craft – small bundles of dried woodland
fruits and seeds, strands of grass neatly tying up the parcel within beech
leaves. Oils and juices from nuts and fruits glistened in the conker bowls, as
the fire gave light to the hovel. “We will now be able to help others,” she
said, “It has been a long wait.”
“I gave them the slip okay, shouldn’t be too
much of a problem keeping the stocks up for a while,” I said.
As the fire established, the fat from the ball started
to soften. The apocatharist scuffed at the soil with her claws, forming a
channel to collect the fat. Some of it would go straight to the sick, who
nestled in their weakened state within the hollow base of the protecting oak
tree. The rest was to be bound with life giving moss and kept as a compound for
any other illness that would befall the forest.
The many seeds that came out of the soft pulp, as it
was rendered down, were collected and put onto a woven nettle rope rack, to dry
by the fire. All of these seeds were life giving, but one, a small oval black
one, were the richest of all. These were planted in vast, warm underground
caverns by moles, to provide a harvest of ground sorrel - the most prized of
all health giving plants.
The hodgeheg was pleased as she quickly went about her
business. Her friend, the squirrel, was an invaluable ally to her carrying out
her healing powers. Without the prolific collection of the ingredients for her
remedies, the woodland dwellers would have no protection against sickness. She
had heard of places where the squirrels had mysteriously not returned to the
hodgehegs, not returned with their precious stores. For every time this was the
case, the heg herself would be forced to forage herself in dangerous places,
where the slowness in their limbs would count against them in getting away from
the big ones, many never returned.
No comments:
Post a Comment