More worrying is where the story says:

The six types of house spider, which can grow to a legspan of a couple of inches, are familiar. Others include the jumping zebra spider, which leaps on to its prey rather than bothering to make a web, and the pink prowler, which has six eyes.

So…  reminding us how normal spiders can be two inches wide, it tells us about spider that leap and pink ones with six eyes.  That would not be too bad if it was not immediately followed by:

If you move furniture around and look underneath, or poke about in the garden, you should make some good finds.

Eeek.  My mind has already concatenated the first paragraph and come up with a mental image of two inch, six-eyes, pink, leaping spiders.  I can handle that – but I don’t then want to have the suggestion planted that these things are lurking under every piece of furniture.

I just wish I had not looked at the gallery that comes with the story.  I was happier before learning that there is such a thing as a spitting spider.

1. Is the word “bumper” ever used outside newspapers?

According to the news story the pigeon flew the 60 miles between two sites in 68 minutes.  This is very nearly 60mph (well more like 53mph).  Meanwhile Wikipedia says the average speed of homing pigeons over moderate distances is about 30mph. (OK – there is no citation for that).  A few years ago a pigeon-fancier in Wales won £30,000 when his bird won a race, flying at an average of 41mph so Winston was really doing well to fly more than 25% faster than a bird that won a prize like that!

Maybe the birds can go faster over shorter distances, but even so 53mph sounds pretty bloody impressive, and a little suspicious… has it been tested for performance-enhancing drugs?

Meanwhile, our cats have asked me to ditch Virgin Media broadband and buy a crate of pigeons, but I think they may have an ulterior motive.

Rojo enjoying the back garden

Young Rojo is in my bad books now.  He has been trying the patience of the entire household for a while now, but I am ridiculously lenient with him and let him (literally) walk all over me.

Tonight he came in when Chas got home, jumped on top of me, stuck his nose in my ear while purring loudly and started padding at my face. As usual. And then I noticed… he was naked!

That’s right – no sign of the collar we bought him and, more importantly, no sign of the unbelievably expensive nametag and the magnet for operating the cat flap.

I’m not sure whether getting a replacement would be a wise investment because I don’t rate Rojo’s chances for much of a life expectancy at the moment.  He has started showing a determination to get into our neighbour’s house through her window.  That would be our neighbour with the dog.  That would be Max; the gigantic white alsation who hates cats…   Even our senior, street-fighting serial killer cat steers clear of Max.

There have been countless similar examples of numpties dialling 999 for trivial reasons so the difficult thing would seem to be not teaching a dog (or person) how to dial 999 (or 911) but teaching them when to do it and more importantly when not to do it.  Just imagine the emergency switchboard getting calls because the dog wants to go out or has found an interesting smell.

Lets find out who trained that dog and bring them over here to train our humans!

Fluffy dog caption

I had to get one for Rob but we are now unsure what to call it. I thought of ‘Dog’, since the Horse campaign failed, Wolfie or Foxy (in a Citizen Smith kind of way) but none of them seem quite right.  We are going to look up the Finnish/Lapp word for wolf but don’t expect to be able to pronounce it…

Oh yes, and this link is the reason why I had to buy it for Rob – we are sickeningly cute I’m afraid, there appears to be no cure….

Not that I mind.  I like kittens.

My only real worry is that our existing cat does not like kittens so this little fella is here on a trial period.  The conditions are that if the big cat doesn’t kill him he can stay.

No name as yet.  Still trying to see what suits him.  Since he is ginger I did think of calling him Baker, but Jayne vetoed that. She keeps on how the kitten’s colouring is fox-like, right down to the hint of white on his tail, so we may end up with something a bit fox-related, but at the moment we are still open to suggestions.

He does like the camera though, which is why it is so hard to get a photo of him: he is fascinated by the camera strap and keeps going for it instead of posing properly.  After several attempts (going well into double figures) I finally managed to get this shot.

Gorgeous isn’t he?  I can’t believe that somebody was considering dumping him before Jayne decided to come to the rescue.

I can now get quite close to them, and frequently do when I decide to take macro photos of them. I can put up with having a spider in my peripheral vision, climbing up the blinds next to the desk while I am sitting here, but no way am I going to touch the bugger.

It looks like the slug season has moved on to the spider season now, and there are webs everywhere. I have been getting really impressed by a couple of the ones in our garden who manage to sling a web between two places two or three metres apart, and then do it all again the next day when it gets destroyed.

Not destroyed by me. I think its the cat. I know its not very house-proud of me but when I find that a spider has spun a big web from a light fitting, for example, I don’t get rid of it if it is still occupied. Instead I keep checking to see how many flies have been caught.

We are likely to have a lot of guests round next month for Jayne’s birthday party, and I reckon all the spider webs will have to go then, but its a shame. Some of these webs are so intricate but get built so quickly.

I was looking at a huge web on the shed, belonging to a 1cm spider. I was trying to work out how big a web could be spun by a spider the size of a cat and came to the conclusion that if spiders the size of cats were common they would be ruling the world by now.

The place was even more packed out than the Velazquez exhibition in January! (Admittedly down to the fact that the Thames Estuary Art Club has more humble premises than the National Gallery). A lot of the paintings were very good. So we have Mum and sister Mary doing their watercolours, Mum’s sister is a talented potter, Mum’s brother is a joiner who has done some remarkable things with wood, and sister Jane also dabbles with art. I’m still trying to work out how this artistic and creative streak managed to go through the whole family and miss me completely… a few websites and the odd semi-decent-by-fluke photo doesn’t really count.

Anyway. Coming back from Southend I was dead chuffed to see another badger warning sign, this time on the A127. Like the Isle of Wight sign it was a generic exclamation mark triangle sign with the word ‘Badgers’ under it.

Deer, cattle, horses and even men opening umbrellas get their own little picture on road signs. There is obviously a growing badger problem, as evidenced by all these warning signs. Maybe its time for a new road sign with a picture of a badger on it.

I could run a whimsical competition for the best design for a badger road sign, but I know it would be ignored. Jayne tells me that I must, under no circumstances, embarrass her by starting up a petition on the No. 10 web site. I should have just done it without mentioning it first

Having exhausted the possibilities of snail photography, and slugs and spiders, and snapping the flying ant invasion its now the turn of the unidentified red bugs who were getting jiggy with it on the grass stalk I was going to use to play with the cat.

Interesting philosophical question though… is the one at the bottom the one who is ‘on top’?