Acrobatic Squirrel

We've had a  visiting squirrel giving us some entertainment over the past couple of days. It has come into the garden and run along the top of the fence and then it stands and stares at the bird feeder from the left-hand side of the garden, Garry and Shelley's side. We re-installed the bird feeder a few weeks ago and used a thing in the ground which has four 'spikes' in it which you push into the ground and then put the central pole of the feeding station into this and lock it in place using the butterfly nuts and, considering the wind we've had blowing through the garden recently, the thing seems to be working successfully. It has stood firm and hasn't moved. I'd suggested we move the entire thing further away from the fence because of the fact we had a squirrel actually jump from the fence onto the bird-feeding station. Quit a feat and actually could have impaled itself on the finial which tops the feeding station. Amazed when I saw this with my own eyes. This new squirrel has managed to actually climb up the pole and hang upside down from the bird feeders, and climb down and change direction several times before running away into the long grass near the fence and then, somehow or other, climb back up onto the fence and was last seen running away along the branches of the over-hanging trees. And throughout all this, Alfie was asleep on the sofa and totally oblivious of all this going on outside the window. I did manage to get some photographs of this incident, but unfortunately the results are not as good as they might have been.

Alfie came in the house and there was a really bad smell. We couldn't find out where it was coming from. Had he rolled in something stinky? Dogs have a habit of doing this. It's not nice. So we had to stick him in the bath, much to his displeasure. He currently looks like a drowned rat (although I've never actually seen a drowned rat.) Running around the house shaking himself and rubbing himself against bits of furniture. But it's as well to do this as we couldn't spend the rest of the day with that awful stink.