Four legged friends

About six years ago, no doubt prompted by a spot of freezing, I was moved to make a small house for the various pipes outside our back door, nicely snapped at reference 1.

Then yesterday, I was still in the process of waking up when BH came to tell me that someone else's black dustbin had fallen over and foxes had scattered bits of green and black plastic all over our front drive. This was followed by an update a few minutes later to the effect that it was not someone else's dustbin at all, rather that a fox had been poking around underneath said small house.

Inspection

At which point I got up, and in reasonably short order was on the case. Full panoply of bench, tool box, electric drill and so forth deployed on the drive. Inspection cover off the small house. Much mess. Several of the dustbin bags used to hold the insulating pellets (quite expensive as I recall, £10 a bag or something from a post box and packaging shop in East Street) had been eaten open. Pellets everywhere. Some seed husks from the bird feeder on the back patio.

And as I cleared it all up something black and furry shot out, across the drive and somehow into the fence opposite. Never to be seen again. Rather large for a mouse but rather small for a rat. Presumably a fox had smelt same and had been poking around at the openings at each end of the house - openings which served to provide ventilation and drainage and which had not been interfered with for years.

Note the wire loop on one of the planks making up the inspection cover. An aide memoire about which plank was which.

Remedial action

In this snap of remedial shutters for the openings, the overground, external mains water input can also be seen, lightly wrapped. We suspect something which arrived with the sixties building works, something which would not have been there originally. Even so, the water input runs back to the road only a few inches below the surface, so not too clever if it gets really cold. And to the left of the water input, one can just see a corner of the left hand opening.

The remedial shutters took a couple of hours to put together. Followed by a swift coat of Cuprinol, followed by a pause to dry. Plus tea and biscuits. Followed by fitting. Quite enough to stop interference by a fox, probably not quite enough to stop a small mouse, but we shall see.

New bags of pellets put together, very loosely filled so that the bags could be fitted around the pipes. Inspection cover replaced. All done by around 1530.

PS: the shutters are handed and I managed to get the left hand and right hand shutters right first time, without needing to reverse their assembly, half way through.

Reference 1: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/10/its-that-diy-time-again.html.