From Giliell: a poor mouse that fell into a bucket with rainwater and obviously drowned. I emptied them all out, at least the big ones so no other animal will suffer that fate. Click for full size.
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Those eyes are an extra level of spooky.
To prevent this kind of thing happening, I put an alluminium lath/profile or something similar in every bucket in the garden, so animals that fall in can climb out.
Oh, eek.
I had a horror a year ago: I was on a trip to Europe and came home and several mice had fallen into my large garbage bin downstairs. Two had died and the survivor had eaten pieces of its compatriots. All I could think (as I freed the survivor and hosed out the bin) was that Harlan Ellison would have written a story from the mouse’s perspective.
Yeah, whenever I am away, there is a bin liner in the bin and I leave a towel on the edge of the sink so mousies can climb out. If any of them swan-die into the toilet, it’s their problem. My sympathy only extends so far.
I don’t know from mice, but rats will eat a rat corpse if no one comes along and removes the body, and it’s not generally from hunger, but corpse stench attracts predators. Of course, if you’re stranded and stuck somewhere, with no food for days, well…even people do that.
Oh eurgh. Poor mousey.
I once found a frog in one of my root-watering cups. It was hopping around in the bottom, stuck, so I thought: “Well, I’ll just fill up the cup with water, like usual, and the frog can just swim out. That should be less traumatic for it than me picking it up, and it’s not like it’ll drown.”
I was wrong. I’m not sure what happened, but the frog went stiff as a board, quite dead, the moment the water hit it. The water was about the same temperature as the air (around 90F); I checked it to make sure it wasn’t hot or cold before I put it in.
I use large sports-drink bottles to water my roots now. It’s a little annoying to unsrew the lids every time I water, but no more dead critters.