In my wildly untidy back garden, the puppy is now big enough to scramble up a rubble pile to get next door. I’m dismantling the heavy chunks of concrete when something much more delicate is revealed: in one particular nook there is a nest. It is no more than a hand’s width in diameter and on a chilly day it looks quite inviting for a small creature: leaves, moss and grass. Access is limited and would require crawling up tight spaces from underneath; coupled with the dark droppings, like tiny grains of black rice, this suggests a rodent resident. It doesn’t smell like a house mouse nest – that pungent aroma of pee – so I suspect this was the summer home of a female wood mouse, perhaps abandoned in favour of community living for the colder months.
Wood mice nest together to get through the winter, most often in underground burrows alongside food stores collected in their frantic autumn foraging sprees. In spring, females establish individual nests beneath hedgerows or tucked into tree roots, but they are drawn to anywhere warm with plentiful food nearby, turning up in bird boxes, sheds and even car radiators. Perhaps “garden mouse” should be added to Apodemus sylvaticus’s aliases “wood mouse” and “long-tailed field mouse”.
With the architect absent, I have to consider other clues to confirm whose grand design I have discovered. In the autumn, I saw something scurrying in the twilight tangle of brambles where our birdfeeders sit: a small, dark shape attracted by the banquet of fruit and spillages from the messy eaters above. Most of our suburban neighbourhood is laid to lawn and decking, but our patch has several mature trees: elder, cherry, and a big ash that dominates the back corner. Saplings sprout up all over – could they be from forgotten stores of a mouse that favours seeds and fruit pips?
When spring arrives, the puppy is likely to be the first to know if the mouse resurfaces to nest again. I’m hoping our green space can be shared harmoniously, so I’ll be selflessly cuddling the dog on the sofa at night when the mouse is most active.
