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THE SECRET LIVES OF GARDEN WILDLIFE by Dominic Couzens
A killer skulks amongst the leaves in this extract from the book:
Turf Wars
Just occasionally, when we hear a noise downstairs in the middle of the night, our imagination flickers to the terrifying prospect of a malevolent intruder, some deranged killer, at large in the garden. With luck we soon calm down and go back to sleep. But in many gardens, espcially ones with a little rank vegetation, those fearful instincts may actually be quite right. There is a deranged killer out there. But it's down in the leaf litter.
The shrew is a furry little mammal that isn't exactly cute and cuddly - its nose is too long and its eyes too small - but at least has some of the endearing attributes of a mouse. However, if you get to look at a shrew for long enough the warning signs begin to appear: it seems just a little manic; it twitches; it crouches and scuttles and won't look you in the eye. The more you examine it the more you wonder. And then, with sudden ferocity, it dashes out and sinks its teeth into an unsuspecting worm. Within seconds, the scene is an orgy of gore: the worm struggles, but the shrew is stronger and simply shreds it to death, skin coming off and body fluids exploding everywhere. It is, I assure you, quite shocking.
As the shrew moves on it encounters a beetle. Again it metes out this savage destruction, with chitin flying everywhere amidst a sickening crunch of jaws. Within a few minutes there will be another victim, perhaps a spider. And so on, relentlessly. The shrew is truly the garden's bloodthirstiest monster: it simply craves flesh. In fact, if a shrew goes for more than a couple of hours without food it might starve, so by day and night the carnage continues - the perpetrator killing and eating nearly its own bodyweight every day.
And yet shrews, for all their ferocity, are not without enemies themselves - which is why these inconspicuous animals creep about under cover of grass and bushes, or along tunnels beneath the leaf litter. This is not the behaviour of an all powerful predator, but of fearful animal that knows its lowly place in the food chain. A shrew even has poisonous glands on its skin as a last resort against being snatched. But although this may work against some predators, including cats, it is useless against owls, for whom the foul smelling liquid secretion seems to be nothing more than a spicy relish. Thus, the shrew, for all its micro-omnipotence, cowers when the tables are turned.
Copyright Dominic Couzens
As well as the psychopathic tendencies of the shrew, there is a wealth of information in Secret Lives of Garden Wildlife that reveals what lurks beneath the flower pots, and scampers twixt the shrubs.
For instance, the badger and the hedgehog have been locked in a battle of epic proportions for far longer than anyone imagined; the hapless vole lives under constant threat, largely due to its own bladder; and the great grey slug is a master of impressive sexual acrobatics!
All this, and much more is revealed in this engaging, colour illustrated book which covers, month by month, the fascinating lives of garden wildlife.
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