Dinner is served - by us
Every time I read of funds which were collected for worthy causes being filtered into the pockets of corrupt officials I feel greatly saddened.
Yet I suppose mankind has survived in this world by his opportunism. The gravy trains are approaching the station and there are plenty of people waiting to board them.
Mind you, we are not the only ones looking for that train. Take urban foxes. They live off the remains of take-aways, our cast-offs and whatever else they can find. Leave doors or even windows open on sultry summer days and you cannot blame a fox for sneaking in and taking whatever it can find from tables, worksurfaces and so on.
I’ve seen for myself just how forward urban foxes can be, scratching at French windows in their pleas to be fed.
I was amused a few weeks ago to read of the old badger that barged its way through a cat flap, consumed a dog bowl full of food and then decided to have a nap in the absent pooch’s bed. It took a very patient SSPCA inspector some time to persuade it to wake up and return quietly to the great outdoors.
I conclude that animals all have a sharp eye open for that gravy train, in whatever form it comes.
Some years ago I was made aware of a gentleman who had exploited a burn running through his garden to dig a large pond.
He duly stocked his new pond with trout and liked nothing better than to saunter out into his garden and cast a line or two in order to enjoy trout for breakfast.
His private fishery was discovered by a pair of otters and soon there were no fish left.
In contrast, a few days ago I watched one of the world’s greatest exploiters of stocked fish, arrive on the waters of our loch and immediately arc below the surface to begin its instant search for fish. It was a cormorant, not the favourite bird of most fisher folk of my acquaintance.
An animal with which we are becoming increasingly familiar in these parts is the pine marten.
Some years ago an acquaintance of mine went to live in such isolation that he was only able to reach civilisation by walking through several miles of forest or by taking his boat some distance down the sea loch beside which he dwelt. His isolation enabled him to pen several books about the wildlife of his wild existence.
What intrigued many of his readers were his tales of the pine marten he regularly entertained in his kitchen, inducing them to throw off their normal shyness by offering them strawberry jam and peanut butter sandwiches.
During the period running up to the First World War pine marten were cruelly pursued and persecuted. Populations declined rapidly, with only a few surviving in remote glens. The Wildlife Act of 1982 at last gave them the protection they badly needed.
Slowly but surely pine marten populations began to grow and as they grew they expanded their territory southwards. Ardnamurchan was one of their strongholds and I well remember seeing them there. I also enjoyed good sightings of them in the Gairloch area.
Then, to my amazement, I began seeing them in this airt. It is perhaps 20 years since I first started seeing them in this part of the world.
I heard that a pair had tried to set up home in the roof of a toilet block on a nearby caravan park.
Then I was informed of a pine marten which regularly made its way through a cat flap in the door of a fairly remote cottage in order to steal the food put down for the household moggie. Thankfully the householder was reasonably tolerant of the marten invasion.
And then a year or two ago a pair of pine marten discovered a tiny gap through which they could climb in order to gain access to the roof space of an isolated house belonging to friends. Significantly, adjacent to the house was a lovely patch of forest with lots of Scots pine.
Thereafter we enjoyed some wonderful pine marten watching hours. The regular trek of the female marten was from the hole in the roof on to the roof of the conservatory, a trot along the roof until the edge was reached then down the support pole and up on to the picnic table.
This was where our friend loaded the gravy train with peanut butter sandwiches, jam sandwiches and raw eggs in the shell.
If ever a pine marten had jumped upon a gravy train this was it. And as her kits grew they followed the same route.
Eventually, as is their wont, mother pine marten took off with her kits, probably into the rather more natural environment of that nearby wood. Friends wisely had the hole sealed but that was for many of us the pine marten summer.
Incidentally, over the years since I saw that first marten here the grey squirrels that were once so dominant here have gone completely. Now our native reds reign supreme. That, I’m sure, is absolutely down to predation by those gravy train-exploiting pine marten.