Nature Notes

1. Billy the Kid has been spared ending up on the plates of goat-eating locals. (Among whom you may include Beloved but definitely NOT Granny.) He has been taken on by 80 odd year old neighbour who cultivates the large field over the wall - he wants a billy goat to service his nannies. So in due course dear little Billy will be doing what comes naturally, smelling to high heaven the while and looking very far from Granny's charming baby. Macho cabrios are not attractive animals. But who cares about that. Meantime he is sharing a corrall with a cockerel and a duck: there is a grand romance it seems between these two, to the extent that the cockerel is not interested in hens. Granny wonders how they will enjoy being butted by Billy. She also hopes that he will not get his species confused the way the cockerel has. Attempted coition between a goat and a chicken - or duck? Heaven forfend.

2. Bats. Granny doesn't know if there are bats on Lanzarote - but there are definitely bats in Bristol from where she's writing this. Beloved son-in-law has a small machine which translates the very high echo-seeking sounds made by bats into audible click clickety-clicks. Standing outside in a summer night watching a bat or two flit around and listening to their direction finding is magical, not to say unearthly; like close-up messages from outer space.

No babies yet. Or not ones related to Granny, though Clare over on Boob Pencil now has a ten pounder called Oscar. CONGRATULATIONS to her. The first Bookarazzi baby. Good.