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In June we visited the Broughton Hall Game Fair. We met with a number of ‘animal oriented’ people and conducted some interviews. One man we spoke to runs a green pest control supplies store. He was full of information on how the implications of short term chemical pest control have moved him to go down this route.  (see the interview below) We asked him if there was a particular ‘pest’ he would like to be de-classified. He told us that despite his own work involving their trapping, his would be the mole because the mole is a hard worker and an animal that ‘just gets on with it’.

For our first excursion we were at Appleby Horse Fair. We stayed on Fair Hill and spoke to a number of people on the matter of  the relationship between travelling people and their animals. We were interested to know what differences a more itinerant lifestyle had on attitudes towards personal space and the encroachment of other species.

As urban dwellers we tend to suppress our awareness of the degree to which we share space with other creatures. If we were to make a physical cut – a cross-section through our house for instance, imagine what multitudes we would find embedded in its fabric – and if we were seriously to extend that awareness to our gardens, our sense of being ‘outnumbered’ would be profound.