Cyril the Squirrel has been making a bit of a mess in the garden here at the Quirky Museum. Also news about my ears!
Cyril the Squirrel normally does quite well in feeding himself at this time of year. Ordinarily we see him running around with mouthfuls of hazelnuts and he does look quite cute. Mind you, it’s somewhat annoying that he seems to have some amnesia and forgets where he has stashed all of them. The evidence for this is the frequent need to dig up hazelnut saplings from elsewhere in the garden.
This time though, he does seem to be broadening his range of food. He recognises that our sunflowers contain lots of seeds, each one rather delicious and laden with all kinds of proteins and healthy oils. He certainly knows his NHS approved diet.
However, in order for Cyril to gain access to the flower head, a certain amount of lumber jacking needs to take place. Sometimes he will fell a five foot sunflower by nibbling away at the base, other times he will just launch himself at the flower head and do his stuff.
Absolute carnage. Sunflowers cut down here, there and everywhere. To make matters worse, I can see him eyeing up the others….
In other news, my ears
This is not about having my ears pierced again, despite the encouragement on my post which concerned this.
I have known for a while the ear wax in my ears had been building up and it needed shifting. This has happened a number of times before. Sometimes I have been to the Doctor’s surgery for a kind of jet wash. Other times drops have done the trick and have dissolved the waxy blob.
This time my ears were seriously blocked and I suppose I had been putting off doing anything about it as the NHS doesn’t require any of its GPs to provide this service (another example of the Conservatives running the NHS down).
Rachel had been complaining how the TV was getting louder and she was never completely sure I had heard everything she was saying to me (as opposed to just hearing what I had wanted to hear).
So this time I decided to go for a micro suction process. In other words my ears were being Hoovered! The man who did it started by peering into my left ear with his scary looking microscope (this was the ear I had used drops in). He confirmed my ear was full of wax, as if I didn’t already know, and set about sucking it all out while saying it wouldn’t be a problem for him. As the waxy goo was being sucked out, weird noises were getting louder and louder. It really was weird but a nice feeling!
“All done” he said. I could hear beautifully well! At least through my left ear which had been well dosed with drops for a week or so beforehand.
I had not used any drops in my right ear, after all I still needed to have one ear slightly open for business. The sucking started and he stopped after a moment. He explained he could use his tweezers instead. He pulled out the most enormous plug of wax, about the size of a baked bean! He used his sucking machine to mop up any odd bits left.
Hearing the difference was extraordinary – my ears had never been blocked up that much before.
However, there are some disadvantages
My super smooth and supposedly near-silent Lexus seemed quite noisy driving home.
One preacher at our church can be rather loud, excitable and “shouty” even with ear wax. What’s it going to be like now?
Now Rachel knows that I can hear everything. I won’t have any excuse now.