I was sitting at my desk tapping on my laptop keyboard.\u00a0 It was a sunny afternoon and there was a light breeze.\u00a0 I thought: ‘how nice to be working on the boat’.\u00a0 Then I heard some pitter-pattering and a dull clack from outside.\u00a0 I carried on working.\u00a0 ‘It’s probably just a friendly badger or somesuch out on a stroll’.\u00a0 The wooden wind chimes jauntily jangling. ‘Ah! boat life’ I sighed.<\/p>\n
Some time later out of the corner of my eye I spied light movement to the right of the boat (port side actually- but I was facing back to front).\u00a0 Very quickly I registered a black and white pattern, something new to the pontoon.<\/p>\n
It was then that a strange sensation came over me.\u00a0 A slow realisation.\u00a0 Back-tracking I remembered the clacking sound and an earlier memory of a rat-trap assembly on the side of the boat.\u00a0 Peanut butter bait.\u00a0 And then I risked a quick peek back to the unknown pattern that had caught my eye.<\/p>\n
Yikes.\u00a0 A gruesome dawning.\u00a0 A badger- a skunk- something colourful, big, lumpy.\u00a0 Not a rat.\u00a0 No no no. Definitely not a rat.<\/p>\n
I crept silently along the inside wall of the boat, a chance peek here and there. A long thin feather.\u00a0 Shiney royal blue striped white.\u00a0 Feathers.\u00a0 A tropical bird!\u00a0 GOOD LORD NO!<\/p>\n
And there it was: the magpie.\u00a0 Face down in the peanut butter, broken neck, wings akimbo.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t leave the boat, what if it was still alive?\u00a0 How would I rescue such a creature?\u00a0 Could I resuscitate on such a small form?<\/p>\n
So I waited til Pat came home.\u00a0 Stupid greedy magpie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was sitting at my desk tapping on my laptop keyboard.\u00a0 It was a sunny afternoon and there was a light breeze.\u00a0 I thought: ‘how nice to be working on the boat’.\u00a0 Then I heard some pitter-pattering and a dull clack from outside.\u00a0 I carried…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wild-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33,"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/33"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}