Spooky

I carried Nash downstairs for her pre- sleeptime toilet, set her down and let her out the back door into the garden.

The disturbance of a dog reaching the lawn triggered a loud bash followed by flapping wings. The mulberries have been ripening the last few weeks, so birds are feasting constantly. But this noise was too big to be a bird. Even Nash could tell; she stared up from the grass, half aggression half fear.

Up into the starlight we both watched a bat as it flew up into the Halloween night.

Twenty years on, now it is Nash who conjures an entry on a journal-less day with one animal encounter on the way from toilet to the bed.