Hello, Gardeners’ Question Time? What on earth is THIS on my lawn?

AFTER recent heavy rain, gardeners have been seeing plenty of slugs and worms in their flower beds.

But spare a thought for the shocked householder who came home to find this mysterious slimy beastie in his garden.

After much head-scratching, its identity – and extremely unusual origin – became clear: the creature is in fact a deep-sea fish typically found in the Mediterranean.

It is thought the distinctive red bandfish ended up on the lawn in Arran after being dropped by a bird.

Writing on its Facebook page on Monday, the Arran Ranger Service said: ‘Something fishy is going on. I came back from blackberry picking to find this in my garden.

‘Apparently it’s a red bandfish (Cepola macrophthalma). It lives at depths of about 90m (295ft) in a vertical burrow where it lies in wait for passing crustaceans. But what’s it doing in my garden?’ The post prompted several comments suggesting how the fish could have got there. One said: ‘A bird! Took it from a boat?’ Another wrote: ‘I wonder if a bird dropped it?’

Dr Natalia Serpetti, of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, said: ‘While this is an unusual find, the red bandfish has been caught sporadically off the West Coast and this would be close to the northernmost point of its typical range. But with the average temperature of our seas slowly rising, marine creatures more commonly found in the Mediterranean could be a regular sight off the UK in 50 to 100 years’ time.’

In July, another unusual deep-sea fish, understood to be a juvenile lumpsucker, was found in a garden in the Arran village of Corrie.