You see, wishes do come true

The garden-raiding muntjac are back, to his mother’s dismay, but Ed Wills is delighted

- Ed Wills

I wish the muntjac would come back,” I said dreamily, gazing out of the window at the rose bed beyond. It had been almost a year since the original lockdown was imposed, and in that first stint an invasion of muntjac had arrived at the boundary of the garden and made several attempts to cross the border and graze on my mother’s prized roses (The buck stops here, 29 April 2020). They had lost five troops for the cause, including one with a stunning gold-medal head.

One year on and I was back in the same scenario, except there were no muntjac. Hearing the longing in my voice, my mother looked at me sternly, “tsked” and left the room. It seemed the loss of last year’s roses was still a raw subject in her mind.

A few days later, as I returned to the house after looking round the hedgerows to see if all the partridges were safe and sheltered from the heavy wind, my mother came storming up to me, looking fit to burst. “Well, you’ve only gone and jinxed it,” she huffed. “Jinxed what?” I asked, not daring to believe. “They’re back. The muntjac are back.”

I quickly learned what had happened. My mother had gone to fill a rusty wheelbarrow with compost for her beloved roses when an enormous muntjac had erupted from the depths of a yew hedge beside her and sprinted off towards the far corner of the garden.

Full pelt