So Many Critters!

"Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I'm going out to eat worms! Long thin slimy ones, short fat fuzzy ones, gooey, gooey, gooey gooey worms. Now the long fat slimy ones slip down easy but the short fat fuzzy ones stick, And when the short fat fuzzy ones stick in your throat they make a noise like this ...... Eurrghhh" This was a song from my childhood way way way back in the 80s. I specifically remember singing this at guide camp. No, I'm not sure why either! But it's obviously stuck in my mind (and my throat!) to be able to regurgitate it (#sorrynotsorry) nearly 40 years on. I was always a bit of a tomboy when little. I liked getting my hands dirty, unlike my soon to be accountant brother. And I had a particular fondness for worms. I wasn't squeamish about picking them up unlike most girls I knew. I still remember the biology class where we had to dissect a worm and wondering what on earth the problem was with the other girls and their high pitched squealing with disgust. My mother must have been horrified as I came traipsing through the house with handfuls. I named them all, but I'm pretty certain they were all named Fred and George. Don't ask me why, but for some reason those were the names that I used to call everything, including my fish and my car. My motorbikes were Malcolm and Henry, but that's a different story! Needless to say I wasn't allowed to name our children 😁 So, back to worms. My son loves them. They were his first animal love and he still gets excited now if he turns over a log and finds some. He will also move them out of the way if they have wandered into the middle of a pavement so they don't get squished. I didn't know a lot about worms, other than if you chopped them in half you DIDN'T get 2 worms. But I have since found out just how cool worms are and how much they help us. Worms get their nutrients from dead and decaying parts of plants, fungi and animals that are in the ground. The worms eat these and then break them down and spread around all the good nutrients into the soil. This makes good soil, good soil that helps our plants and our crops to grow. Their casts can contain 1000 times more beneficial bacteria than the original soil. The tiny tunnels the worms make also bring water and air into the soil and this makes it much easier for plants and fungi to live. And of course worms provide nutrients up the food chain to the birds, small mammals and amphibians that eat them in turn. Worms help to make our soil healthy. And our soil being healthy helps to combat climate change by acting as a carbon sink, storing carbon dioxide. It can also absorb and store more water, helping to alleviate flooding and feed back moisture in times of drought. So, think twice before you turn your nose up at worms. They are the engineers of the underground, the doctors of the soil, the masters of decay; they quite literally make our earth a better place to live.

When we moved into our house, the garden, both front and back was massively overgrown. It had been left relatively untended for 20 years. The result was a house barely visible from the road, a back garden that appeared half the size it was and a 30ft elderflower bush right outside the lounge window. And that's not to mention the brambles, the chicken wire, the 4ft thick hedge that encroached halfway across the pavement and the buried water manhole cover. So, one of the first tasks we did (I say we, I was 9 weeks pregnant at the time, so was entirely my husband's doing) when we moved in was to cut it all back. Woah!! I hear you cry! Aren't we meant to be saving the habitat? And yes, the answer is of course yes, but we also have to be sensible about it and this garden needed taking back, if only to save the house from the roots, allow people to pass unscathed along the footpath and have a safe space, without being scratched to death, for our children to explore. Being the beginning of March, we had a very limited time in which to do this before the birds starting nesting, so my husband gleefully purchased a chainsaw and got to work, much to the delight of the neighbours! To our astonishment, when we cut down the ridiculous 4ft thick hedge we found two 8 foot high beautiful variegated holly trees that had been buried inside. 7 years on, they continue to thrive and produce copious berries for the birds to enjoy. We uncovered an apple tree as we live on an old orchard site, which has led to numerous years of homemade, rather lethal, cider, and a cobnut tree. Our front garden is now open and we can see the house from the pavement. But what taking all this back has done, is allow us to see the potential in our garden, the potential for wildlife that is. We are fortunate to have a 30ft front garden that sets us back from the cul-de-sac we live in. And with the obvious enjoyment of our son and his never ending hunt for bugs, over the years we have started to develop this into a wildlife haven, much to the horror of my poor parents and their neat, clipped, weed free, ever tidy, garden. Round the side we have a giant log pile next to the compost bin. This has been a constant source of delight to my son, especially as we have a nest of slow worms in the compost that have been there for 4-5 years now. He will often go and check on them, and loves a warm day when they make their way to underneath the lid so he can see them properly. We have various bits of wood and stones around that he can turn over to find as many woodlice (we have thousands!), centipedes, millipedes, spiders, beetles and worms as he likes and watch them interact with the environment and other insects around them. We also have a variety of pots and containers hidden in nooks and crannies for toads and other animals to hide in. 2 years ago my husband dug us a small pond. And when I say small. It's only about 1m long by 50cm wide and not very deep. It is surrounded by stones and has a large log angled in from the side for animals to escape. We have a kneeling patch for the kids to peer into the depths. A stone otter that was a relic of the previous owners now lives in the centre of the pond and around the outside we have metal ducks, a huge metal flamingo standing in the tall grass and wildflowers and a concrete crocodile hiding in the long grass. The pond has been a constant source of delight, not just for my children and the neighbourhood children, but to my husband and I also. We frequently go out to inspect any new visitors. Since we installed it we have toads, frogs, newts, thousands of pond snails, water boat men, dragonflies and their nymphs, frogspawn, whirligig beetles and numerous other insects swimming about. We also see lots of flying insects around the pond so have set up a couple of low power solar lights to attract evening and night time insects. We have seen evidence of hedgehogs and have put a hedgehog igloo neatly hidden nearby. And on an evening you can see bats flying about attracted by the night time insects. For such a small pond it really is a myriad of wildlife and most definitely the best thing we have ever done for our garden. I thoroughly recommend doing this, you really don't need a lot of space at all to have such a massive impact on the local fauna and you never know what you might spot. We have a long way to go, and I reckon our garden will be a constantly adapting and ever changing environment as we find the happy medium between encouraging as much wildlife as possible and being able to maintain it. Ours is not a neat garden, far from it, but when I watch my little boy running through the grass as grasshoppers ping out of his way left and right and see him crouched down watching beetles and ants going about their life as he's turning over stones, I am not worried about neat. We are bringing up kids to understand the importance of animals of all shapes and sizes, especially the tiny ones, and that their habitat and environment matters, not just to their survival but to our survival too. We have a budding entomologist on our hands and I will encourage that in any way I can.

When I was a little girl, my mum took me to a local animal park where she pushed me forward to "volunteer" to hold a tarantula. I can still remember standing there absolutely terrified as this giant spider was placed gently on the back of my hand. I got my mum back later by making her stroke the boa constrictor! A few years ago, one early October morning as I was sat on the loo, I reached across for the toilet paper and let out a silent inwards scream (I was so scared, the outwards scream quite literally would not come out!!) as a huge house spider crawled out of the inside of the toilet roll onto my shoulder. My whole body still shudders thinking about it. I am still not a huge fan, I have to admit. Spiders are still the creatures that make my hair stand up and my skin crawl. However, I have, through conversations with my son and husband and educating myself, learnt more about these amazing creatures and now I don't go screaming from the room when I see one. I have to set an example to my 3 children so they won't grow up with this almost inbuilt fear of creepy crawlies, and instead can admire them and learn from them. Spiders are of course, like every other bug, an essential part of our ecosystem. They eat other insects and act as a natural pesticide for our gardens and crops. They in turn are food for other animals such as birds, lizards and fish. Scientists have been researching spider venom for creating natural insecticides and the wound healing potential of spider silk fibres has led to its use in biocompatible sutures. Amazingly spider venom is also being used in cancer treatments! If that isn't a reason to embrace our eight legged friends, I don't know what is! My son and I have spent many a happy hour looking at spiders in their webs around our garden and admiring the webs in all their splendour covered in the early morning dew. They really are beautiful creatures. So varied in size, shape and colours they create many an opportunity for observation and discussion. So now, I have openly embraced spiders in the house. I don't instantly destroy cobwebs when I see them, and with the exception of the great big house spiders in the bedroom and bathroom I don't get my husband to remove spiders either. Small spiders I now leave alone, even in the bedroom. As I write this, we have a beautiful large house spider in a web in the corner of my lounge. She has been there for a couple of weeks so far and hasn't caused me any harm, so I shall leave her be in her spidery home. As long as she doesn't come for a visit on my shoulder again any time soon that is!