Free Inchworm by Ann Kelley Page A

with his beady black eye, takes the mealworms and flies to the next garden. He’s warbling. It sounds like a trickling stream of water or tiny bells. I wonder if I could tame any other birds?
    I’ve found a second-hand book called Birds as Individuals by Len Howard – Len was a woman who allowed wild birds into her home to roost and they trusted her. (I thought Len was a man’s name. Perhaps she wanted to be a man.) She was a sort of female Saint Sebastian. She recognised individual birds and even their facial expressions, and noted bird behaviour.
    Sep 26 th: Yet another couple of robins are pressing on west Robin and trying to get near the cottage via macrocarpus-tree and surrounding lawn. Four robins are now disputing this tree. From 3.30 until 5 p.m. a chase goes on, round and round the tree and its neighbouring apple-tree on the south-west. Dobs is furious; he sings incessantly with loud emphasis, often flying to the top of the bird-table to display, red-hot anger gleaming from his eyes. His head is enlarged, his body seems shrunken and his figure deformed. He is too agitated by this influx of Robins to take food offered him, he fears to stop singing or displaying for one moment, even to feed… For many hours the flutter of Robin wings is heard, hitting against the leaves as they dash headlong in and out, round and through the leaves. Dobs does not enter the chase but sings continuously from the bird-table, with flashing eyes and alarming contortions of his usually attractive form; also, he now resorts to the splutter-note, which had not hitherto demeaned his song.
    In the book are photographs of a blue tit sitting on her finger as she draws, great tits perched on her shoulders and on her desk as she works at a typewriter. I wish I had known her. What was her secret? How did she get birds to accept her? She often mentions the facial expressions of birds. I know my cats’ expressions well. I can tell if Flo is contented or mad. Charlie’s always happy. She’s a smiler. If she comes to me in the night, her eyes are black and round and she tiptoes. In the morning she’s more likely to leap onto the bed, tail up high, mouth curved in a smile of pleasure. Rambo is the easiest cat to read. His tabby face is very expressive. He frowns, smiles, is worried, anxious, terrified – that more than anything else, he’s such a wuss. Flo’s emotions are complex. She shows disapproval very obviously: she glares mostly. If she’s suddenly in need of affection she’ll drool and look cross-eyed and stupid. I do miss my cats.
    It’s warm enough today to sit in the garden in the shelter of the wall for a little while. Daddy has these posh canvas deckchairs in a shed and we’ve got them out, but a small brown spider with a black head has laid its eggs on the seat of one of them. When I open the chair she pops out of her nest ready to defend her brood. I can’t find her in my spider books. Maybe she is a rarity, a new spider, not described before. I could have a spider named after me: Arachnida Gussii .
    Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet
    Eating her curds and whey.
    There came a big spider
    Who sat down beside her
    And frightened Miss Muffet away
    I don’t know who wrote that – anon, I expect. She wrote lots of nursery rhymes.
    Miss Muffet was the daughter of a spider expert – Reverend Thomas Muffet. When she was ill he made her eat crushed spiders as a cure. No wonder she was frightened of spiders. But most humans feel the same way. We spent a winter in the Seychelles when I was about nine. We had had a terrifying flight in a very small plane from a smaller island back to Mahe in a thunderstorm one evening. I walked into my bedroom, desperate for rest, and saw a hairy spider as big as Mum’s hand on the back of the door. I jumped on the bed and screamed. Mum followed me in and screamed too. We bounced on the bed hugging each other like idiots for a few minutes; then she dragged me out, trying not to disturb the killer