Mouse with Strange Marks

One summers day about 2008 my wife was pegging washing out on the line in our back garden. Close to the washing line was a rowan tree and around the base of the tree was a circular rockery made from broken concrete slabs. Movement caught my wife’s eye and she saw what she called a "cheeky mouse" going about its business as if a human wasn’t there. She flicked a piece washing at it to try to shoo it off but it did not go away so my wife finished the task of hanging out the washing and went back in doors.

 Now the following day things got a little unusual. For some odd reason before I went to work I went into the back garden and it was there I discovered a dead mouse in the middle of our lawn. I picked it up by the tail and was about to dispose of it when I noticed the mouse had unusual trauma to its body.

First in photo "A" the flesh had gone from its nasal area, nothing unusual you might say, just disease. But then I noticed in photo "B" there was a gaping hole at its back end. Again you might say disease, but wait! Photo "C" shows the back of the mouse. I took this image with the camera on Macro, with the normal eye there was a perfect teaspoon shape of cut fur on the mouses back, it was about half a millimetre in depth. You can see the spoon shape starting from either side of its tail, you could not see the two black marks just past half way up on the spoon shape with ordinary eye sight; it was only when I used Macro that these became visible. You must understand that even though it does not look like it in the image, the spoon shape was perfectly cut 

Some years later I showed a vet my images and asked their opinion. They said it could be what is called "Barbering". This is when the mate of an injured creature purposely trims the fur from around the wounded area. They did not venture an opinion on the other injuries. The trimming I can accept, but why in a perfect teaspoon shape, why not just around the two black marks? To me this was not done by a cat because cats maul their prey and carry it around in their mouth getting saliva on the mouses fur. This mouse did not display that kind of trauma. At face value something clamped on and held this mouse while it violated its body, what that something is I have no idea, my hope is someone may read this that could shed some light on what caused the mouses demise.

My wife believes it was the same mouse she saw. Twelve months later the rockery was removed, nothing unusual was found. For now it will have to remain a mystery.

The English Cognizant Citizen

Further Reading
 http://www.kaluefflab.com/pdfs/publications/2006KalueffHairBarbMice.pdf

For Purchase

• Behavioral Genetics of the Mouse: Volume 1, Genetics of Behavioral Phenotypes (Cambridge Handbooks in Behavioural Genetics)
• Behavior Problems of the Dog and Cat, 3e
• House Mouse Aggression (Ettore Majorana International Life Sciences)

Unusual Skeletons in UK Forest

Dog Size Fishbone Skeleton
Creswells Piece is a large expanse of old woodland situated in the countryside near Stroke-on-Kent UK. It is also known as the Sheep Wash. Compared with America’s forests it would be nothing more than a blade of grass but to me this is a large area and when the leaves and blackberry vines grow in summer it becomes quiet dense. The track you see is used by engineers to access the electrical pylons. I prefer to go off road for obvious reasons.

I do go out looking for evidence of unusual things. Most of the time I find nothing, but on this particular day some years ago at the top end deep in Creswells Piece I came across a sight that stopped me in my tracks. In front of me in a small clearing amongst old spindly twisted small trees was a skeleton of an animal which I presumed was a dog, but the odd thing was whatever had devoured this animal left the skeleton in a fishbone design, my mind immediately flashed to an extract from an Arthur C Clarke book it read ......

The Chairman of the South Molton Farmers Union is impressed by the violence of the kills.

"This thing kills and eats lambs like no dog or fox ever did. It eats wool and all and goes for the chops. It leaves the bone structure of the neck like you would leave a fishbone "

As I surveyed the scene I noticed only a little bit of fur remained to prove it wasn't a fish, everything else had gone. The eating of this animal was methodical, because had this been frenzied feeding by hungry Foxes or Badgers all the bones of the spinal column would have been spread out over a larger area. I have found sheep skeletons up in the Scottish wilderness and they were always scattered over a large area.

Some months later I returned and collected the remains of the skeleton in the hopes of getting it identified, unfortunately this was not to happen.

Fox with Skeleton Tail
Elsewhere in Creswells Piece, a few months after the skeleton discovery, I came across a dead Fox lying down neatly under a tree, it had no visible body trauma such as gun shot wound or knife kill and no signs of it having been trapped.

What it did have was nothing but bone for a tail, this animal looked healthy no signs of Mange, it may have been an older Fox but it looked well fed. I tried contacting people involved in wildlife conservation, I asked one gentleman if it was possible for a Fox to live for a length of time just with bone for a tail he said "Nothing surprises him". He did not volunteer to offer examples of similar incidents from his experience of working with such animals. In short I do not think he knew what to say.

There were no signs of blood around where the tail enters the body, so I think we can rule out Fox hunters, I believe they would have taken the whole tail as a trophy.

In the image you will see what looks like a stick it is actually the bone structure of the foxes tail, no fur no flesh no skin just bone and it was still attached to the foxes body. As for the skeleton I would say it was the size of as a Border Collie.
The English Cognizant Citizen

For Purchase

• Arthur C. Clarke's Chronicles of the Strange and Mysterious
• Celtic Mysteries in New England
• Midnight in New England: Strange and Mysterious Tales

Strange Knockings & Scratchings

Knockings

I lived in a haunted house once. I didn't have any problems with it but my husband certainly did. Footsteps coming up the backsteps; the sound of the back door opening, footsteps through the house and then the sound of the front door. Obviously the ghost lived in a time when all our doors were still functioning correctly! A chat to the landlord informed us that it was the old caretaker who used to do a walk thru in real life. Just a friendly ghost still doing his job! No problem… so we thought.

The whole business was too much for our cats and my husband still hadn't come to terms with the fact that he could hear a ghost. We did a little ritual with sage to keep the caretaker out of the house. That worked quite fine for about four months and then off it all started again. This time with a difference.

The old caretaker was knocking on the back door to be let in!

So what does one do when a ghost is knocking on the back door in the middle of the night? Well the first thing you do is to stand there and wait for it to happen again. Then when that happens you run out the front door and tear around the house to see who is at the back door. When you see no one there that is when you start looking at shadows and realise that you are standing alone in the dark in your backyard on a property surrounded by scrub chasing ghosts. A fact that smacks you in the face with its implausibility. A man's ghostly laugh near the back gate soon brings you back to reality.

That is when you make the decision that you are not going to hear any more strange knockings on doors. Sure, as if ignoring it would make it go away! The knockings just get louder and turn into thumping’s. Then they start happening through the day and are heard by visiting family members as well. Sometimes the thumping's were followed by tapping's under the house. You could feel the vibration with your foot right at the spot.

For the rest of our time in that house we discovered that saging every few months kept things quiet. We even had a few funny things happen. My husband decided to finish an uncompleted building job. Over the next few weeks he was woken at night by the sound of scraping roof tin and banging of hammers. Obviously the old caretaker had decided to join him in work.

Scratchings

"The hair still stands up on my neck. Please understand when you read it, nothing can get under our property. There is no cellar, there are concrete footings all the way round, and any animal would have to tunnel 100 yards as the crow flys, avoiding pipe work and other obstacles just to get to our house

We have lived at this property for 34 years and it is not until I think about it that I realize just how many strange events have taken place. I think most people who encounter the unknown close their minds and brush it off as natural causes or coincidence, but I will explore an event and ask questions.

The incident that happened to me was about 1980. I was off work for a few days due to a very bad back you know the sort where you cannot stand straight or sit comfortable. I had to get around with the help of a brush stale. Anyway on this particular day I was in on my own, I had with difficultly just lowered myself into an armchair by the window. The fireplace is only about six foot from my chair so it’s quiet close. As I sat there in silence all of a sudden, without any warning, under the floor between me and the fireplace I heard two powerful scratch sounds. The hair stood up on my neck, I rose from my chair and stood frozen to the spot staring at the floor. For the next full minute I forgot I had a bad back. I sat for many a while just looking at the floor wondering what could have made such powerful noise I could not even imagine a grizzly dragging its claws on wood making the sound I heard.

Now fast forward to 2005, in the years leading up to 2005 we had a loft conversion on our bungalow. It was converted into two bedrooms which now accommodate our grandchildren when they come to stay. Well one day in the afternoon my wife was in one of the bedrooms tidying up and moving things around when all of a sudden there was a powerful scratch from where the chimney was, she found it very unnerving and could not think what could have made such a sound. That was the only time the scratching was heard again and it was years apart. We have ruled out a squirrel, mouse, rat and bird, as there is no way any such creature can gain entry under the floor boards and if they did the noise would be continuous. Yes they can get down the chimney but the only way out if not upward is to come out from behind our gas fire, this happened once with a bird. The noise from the chimney was powerful as though it was on wood but they do not build houses with wood in the chimney`s for obvious reasons . I hope sometime this year to get a look under the floor board as we are planning to get a new central heating system, I will let you know if I find anything."

  The English Cognizant Citizen

Read more about strange scratchings
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110711174616AAgXZze
http://www.wikihow.com/Tell-if-Your-House-Is-Haunted

For Purchase

• Cock Lane and Common-Sense (Cambridge Library Collection - Spiritualism and Esoteric Knowledge)
• Dead Sky Morning (Experiment in Terror)
• Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits, and Haunted Places

Something in the Water

Somewhere in the cyber world I read an incident where two young men threw a stick across a river only to find that it hit something invisible, stopped for a few seconds and then slid down into the water. They never found out what the stick hit and they quickly left the area.

A keen angler also encountered an unknown force.

"On this particular day in 2012 I went to a place called Blakesly Hall which is situated in the county of Staffordshire in the UK. I spent most of the day there and did not get much luck, the fish were not biting, I was cold and hungry and decided to call it a day, but first I thought I would chance one more cast. My line sailed through the air and landed in the middle of the pool. After a few moments I thought I had a bite so I reeled in the line a little but then it came to a sudden solid stop. I swore and thought that a snagged line is just what I needed at the end of a bad day.

Just as I prepared to put on some strong gloves in order to manually free my line, another angler came to talk to me; he asked if I was having problems. I said it looks as though my line is caught on a rock or wood at the bottom of the pool. By now I had wrapped the line around my protected hands and was pulling hard to free the snag. I'm a big person with hands like shovels and I expected something to give fairly soon. It was then that the gentleman who joined me blurted out "Good grief I have never seen that before!"

I had been concentrating on wrapping the line around my hands and I looked up and there to my utter amazement was my fishing line suspended 6 to 8 foot out of the water the hook, bait, float and sinker just hanging there! The other side of the pool was just open land, there were no bushes or tree`s on the other side of the pool where a careless angler may have left a line caught in a tree.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Then suddenly the hook, line, bait and sinker just dropped straight down into the water.  

That was it! I packed up! I rushed home to tell everyone about my strange experience.

I have no interest in UFOs or the paranormal and this incident quite threw me; there was no natural reason whatsoever for that line to be suspended out of the water like that. It was NOT normal.

That’s one place I will never do any night fishing."
The English Cognizant Citizen

For Purchase

• Entities Among Us: Unseen Forces That Affect Our Daily Lives
• Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition
• Nature Parks PETRIFIED FOREST Arizona