He told us of his shed. He’d been talking about the gardening that he intended to do this weekend, and how he was going to get his power hose out. “It’s brilliant,” he said, as proud as punch. Then he mentioned how he’d gone into his shed one morning after not having opened it since the onset of winter only to find a great mound of earth on its floor. I asked if it was mole. “No, a mole would be too small to make that kind of heap,” he said, “it was some kind of burrowing animal, I thought it might be a badger.” A friend who helped restore the floor of the shed to its former glory suggested that it might have been a polecat. Polecat is another name for a stoat, I think. What would it have been after? “My nuts,” he said and then laughed that laugh of his.
