Little domestic mysteries

Life - at the moment - is full of little mysteries.

I am still working on The Case of the Missing Brassiere and The Case of the Little Reaping-Hook, but in the last couple of days I have solved a couple of others.

The afternoon before last, H.I. sent me a message saying that there was another little mystery to solve when I got home.

When I arrived she took me into the living room and pointed at a plant which has been over-spilling the mantle piece for about 40 years. The wall, shelf and floor were covered in what looked like large mouse-droppings and there were bits of fresh leaf lying around too. That much shit would have had to come from at least a dozen mice, so I looked over the small leaves of the plant and found most of them had great patches chewed out of them. Hmm, I thought.

I waited until dark then returned with a torch. When I switched it on there was the culprit. A great, fat caterpillar making no attempt to camouflage itself, travelling up a stem and looking very embarrassed. You would not believe how much shit comes from a single caterpillar in one or two nights. I put it on the kitchen window box to eat the weeds which are doing very well in it, but I have neither seen or heard from it since. It seems to have lost its appetite.

This morning I opened the fridge and found what looked like a pool of blood running out from the bottom and onto the floor. There was no fresh meat in there so I began to work my way up, shelf by shelf, having the clear-out I had promised to do for the last 2 years.

Old jars of goose fat from 3 Christmases ago, cream from months back, 2 boxes of Atora suet from God knows when, 5 opened jars of Thai curry paste - all this and more went into the bin.

Finally I/we got to the freezer box where everything except an unopened bag of cherries was frozen solid. Why had they not frozen and where was the juice coming from?

I worked out that they had not frozen because they had begun to gently rot, creating their own heat from the inside. I also found a tiny pin-prick at the bottom of the plastic bag...

Call me Sherlock...