Survival of the Fittest

Survival of the Fittest

Basically, I am a simple soul and it does not take much to please me. So after we had turned to the left at the finger post, roughly two miles, having seen seven pretty little deer already along the way, we made our way to the next gate. A new copse of tiny twigs has been recently planted; each wee, whispered promise of a tree, carefully supported with a stake to protect it from the ravages of the prevalent South West wind.

As we passed through the gate it was clear that the sound had disturbed a few deer grazing on our right hand side a little lower down the slope. We stopped transfixed, so that it took a second or two for Steve to recover enough sense to struggle and retrieve his phone from his back pocket for photos. As wide eyed as the herd of deer before us, we despaired realising that we were only going to catch them visually fleeing. 

A few deer per run loop is normal. A herd of deer is a once in several years minute of pleasure. A herd of deer, with three big white ones within it, was time to drop dead with joy and ascent to heaven with God’s name on your lips moment!

Everything after that was an anti climax. The weather was not anything to write home about, the wind was starting to pick up again after a still start. It was not cold and the clouds were drear rather than a photographers dream, since there was no sunshine to improve shape and form and colour.

Steve kept the phone in his hand ready to catch the next gift from Mother Nature, but settled for a few views from the ridge path, down over the farm at Lower Barpham, then made do in the end with a few snaps of me. I don’t think he is actually mean enough to have thought what it was he was asking, when he ordered me to squat down in front of some dramatically tangled Hazel fronds. Those few shots found me getting stung by the fresh young nettle leaves all over my lower legs and knees as well as my hands and arms……. The weird thing is; that I don’t find that immediate, burning and tingling sensation all that unpleasant.

I always feel that nettles stings are on a therapeutic level in a way. I am still tingling, but not a forcefully as I write now. I wonder if I built a resistance to that first pain years ago when I had broken two bones in my arm and one in my foot whilst running on holiday in Italy, and again a few of years ago when I fell off my bike and broke my wrist/hand. During both periods of recovery I deliberately stung myself on nettle plants claiming that the sting-burns were preferable to the break-pain.  Yes, a simple soul indeed.

On our return home, the second coffee of the day seemed like a good idea. Birdy had come to sit on the window sill in the kitchen as I started to rattle cups, hoping upon hope that there might be something in it for her. First, it was again necessary to extinguish half dozen ants on zone patrol over my work surface. I offered Birdy the bodies but she looked at them and then met my eyes resentfully and I swear she raised an eyebrow including a ‘You gotta be kindin’ attitude.

The Ant invasion started in the usual way with a single soldier out on a reconnaissance deployment searching for suitable food sources. By the next day there were several and then the main landing began at a time when we were out of ant killer. The time waiting for a grocery order containing the powder gave them time to gather reserves. For days we had bodies everywhere as they met our full wrath.

The main attraction came in the form of my honey stock at the tea and coffee station. This morning, when I made my short cup of coffee before leaving for our training run, they had confirmed that the battle was not yet over; on picking up the pot of Manuka honey; that goes in my first coffee of the day, several ants fell to the work top. 

I pressed them flat and then removed the lid to take a big spoonful out to put in my coffee cup, on top of the coffee and creamer already there present. It was the straw that broke the camels back when, as I stuck the spoon into the jar and as I scooped in the honey onto the spoon, that an ant disappeared into the creamed honey mix like a wild life adventurer being sucked into a jungle quicksand swamp.

My hand hovered monetarily as I told my husband what had occurred. He quickly exclaimed “Oh God yuk, chuck it away”.  I realised that I had sunk to new depths of depravity as I passed the honey and Ant mix into my cup and poured boiling water into the mix and stirred vigorously. Steve asked what I was doing and I simply said, “It’s just an Ant…. A speck, it won’t kill me”. He closed his mouth, (that had still been agape), and walked away. I followed behind him in the direction of our sitting room to sit and drink our wake up call cuppa muttering that I had seen a film about aborigines when I was in Australia, adding that they eat Ants all the time and that I once read that if Genghis Khan was out hunting and ran out of food he would just make a small cut on his horses neck and drink a little blood to survive. Steve pointed out the obvious; that I was not Genghis Khan, to which I replied, “No, but I am a something of survivor”!