I woke up to an unusual occurrence last night. Two o’clock a banshee cry unlike anything I have ever heard comes from right outside my bedroom window. Now my bedroom is three meters off the ground, and outside is a pergola covered with roses, so it’s not an obvious place for a nightly visitor; needless to say I am quite startled, as the caterwauling yowling resembles a blend of mad makak monkeys, a cat in heat on helium, and (incongruously) the clucking of a content cock – all individually unlikely to be perched outside, and even less prone to assemble as a nocturnal group to spontaneously perform an impromptu serenade for me on the barbed branches – or so one would have thought.

So I get up and move cautiously towards the window, but whatever it is immediately senses my presence, and the rambunctious ruckus stops – apart from some of the contented clucking and chirping, for some reason. The rose thicket is, well, thick – too thick for me to see anything, so eventually I wander back to bed in dazed amazement and with more than a little adrenaline. Happily there are no further concerts in the night.

Weird? Yes. Spooky? You betcha. So: This morning I did some research, and it seems I was witness to a crime. In all likelyhood what happened outside was a stoat mating session, or rather stoat rape – the males (also known as dogs, bucks, jacks or hobs) apparently aren’t very woke, choosing instead to force themselves on as many females (aka bitches, does or jills) as they can during mating season, something which the latter often object to quite loudly (and damn right, too).

Since I have already had stoats take up residence in the engine compartment of my new car I know they are around – I had to install an expensive piece of ultrasound equipment to get them to stop nibbling on the interior lining. Also, it’s hard to imagine anything else choosing the top of my thorn-encrusted pergola as a spot for some good lovin’, so it’s likely them. The otherworldly cries were simply Jill telling Jack what a wastrel weasel he was, in a manner of speaking.

Long story short, I’m hopeful that before long the neighbourhood might be home to a caravan of stout stoats (bet you didn’t know that collective noun existed, eh?). They might be murderous rapist psychopaths, but then you could say the same thing for cats, and we invite them into our homes. Just don’t fuck with my car or outside my bedroom, would ya?