FREEZE-FRAME

• We fitted a sideways-sliding sheet of glass
• inside the draughty sashes to slow
• the escaping heat.


• A breakfast-time inrush of cats and children
• startled a woodmouse on the windowsill:
• it squeezed behind the inner panel, to find
• itself imprisoned, a museum exhibit
• in a glass box —
• unblinking faces peering in from one side,
• morning light pouring through the other.


• The woodmouse froze — but playing dead
• was unconvincing, with the sun
• painting chestnut and gold into its fur,
• and bright black in its eye.


• Cats and children shooed away,
• we rescued it and then released it
• in the long grass.


• The cats toiled each night,
• leaving a stinking mole outside the door,
• a dead rat from the farm at the foot of the bed,
• the tough back legs of a rabbit in the hall,
• or a live shrew in the toe of my wellington boot.


• No woodmouse, though:
• if they caught him they kept it quiet
• and ate him out of sight.

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