Anyone who's been reading this blog for a while now might recall that the converted barn I live in was also home to some cheeky mice for a while. And a vole. And not because I invited them in. I thought you might be interested to know that I've seen no sign of them for about four months now. Did I kill them? No. Despite a prevailing view that they would return, Amazing Journey style, if I merely deported them, when I finally caught them I put them outside the front door and they never came back. That might be because Pickle, next door's ghostly white cat, patrols the area (he often leaves me murine carcasses). It might be because getting back in was not so easy, even for these tiny geniuses. Or it might simply be that they felt unwelcome and consequently threw their tiny capes over their shoulders and swept off to find alternative lodgings where they might be properly appreciated. Anyway, for the time being at least, that's the end of the mouse story. Now it's just me, a few invertebrates that I dispatch unmercilessly, and possibly a bat, which I think sleeps in my roof from time to time.