Spring-Watch

So, there we are, taking breakfast and watching the goings on in the garden. The rat (we are hoping it's the last one) played around the trap, dodged the squirrel and generally looked annoyingly cute; tits of all varieties followed each other to the suet pellets; a collared dove managed to get onto the window feeder in pursuit of fresh, wiggling meal-worms; blackbirds craftily waited below to pick the morsels dropped by the above.
But the stars of the show this week have been this pair - now regular visitors. Despite what the book says, they are there, every morning at 7.00am or thereabouts; now dad is feeding the rather large and, dare I say it, bullish child. BE grabbed the tripod and we waited until they came back and took up position.
Meanwhile, the trap sprang and the rat did a few cartwheels before a last couple of death throws and then lay dead. Or so we thought. But I think we only caught its whiskers. After passing through various stages of twitching, hiccoughing, scratching, falling over and torpor, Lazarus, as he is now known, picked himself up and made his way unsteadily back into the undergrowth.
I had suggested to BE that he went out earlier to finish off the rodent, but he's just not that kind of man, thank goodness.