this is a true story, an actual event that took place a few years ago.
I have related this to friends, most find it hard to believe, but I have no need to make it up.
I know I've only been on this site for a short while, but I have a feeling some here will appreciate what I am about tell you, if not, ohh well
The year is 2004 and I am still living in a 26ft x 9ft caravan here on the farm.
It had been sited for me to live in back in 1989, this while an old house was renovated.
I had been assured that planning had been aquired, but being the cynic I am, as soon as I moved in I set about planting lots of clematis around it, plus flowering crab apples and the likes, to hide it from prying eyes.
The plants had virtually covered the caravan and also the brick built outhouse that I had added, plus my "elizabethen library" also in brick, built on the side.
Back to the story before you get bored.
It wasn't such a bad summer, not as hot as 2003 but warm enough. Inside the caravan, the heat could become quite oppressive at times, but by leaving all the windows open and closing the curtains on the sunny side, she was bearable enough, I love the heat anyway
One afternoon, around 4pm I came in from the fields for refreshment. Up the steps into the outhouse, then turning into the caravan itself I see something the likes of which I had never seen before.
Just a largish black blob, seemingly motionless at first, but I knew immediately that this was a humming bird hawk moth. It was moving as if on a string, not panicing, it was just searching for a way back out.
Talk about excited, I needed a closer look.
Closing all the windows without curtains and the door to the outhouse, I walked up and coaxed him back down and into the outhouse and shut the caravan door.
I pulled out the stool and sat down. The moth seemed quite unperturbed, though how a perturbed one would look I'm not sure
What an incredible creation these things are, considering I'm supposed to be a big ard farmer who has no regard for anything, I felt very moved by this moths presence.
I kept him in there for a minute, maybe two, certainly no longer, before reaching up and opening the window and letting him out. I stood up and there he was motionless, facing me, hovering in mid air less than a foot away from my face, before turning away and dissapearing behind the clematis.
I put the kettle on, opened all the windows again and sat in the chair trying to take it all in. How is it possible to live and work in the countryside for 45 years without coming into contact with such a creature.
As usual, I was searching for a book before the kettle boiled. Into the library, all birds birds cows sheep, there must be something in here somewhere, then I remembered, I had looked up something about bot flys some months previously, now where is that observers book of insects.
I made the coffee and eventually located the book under a heap of paperwork on the desk. Straight to the index, humming bird hawk moth page 72 plate 28
Ok now prepare to disbelieve.
Turning the book and thumbing the pages, it kind of opened itself, and inside between the open pages layed some very flat notes £85 to be exact, the page number, yes page 72
To this day I dont remember putting it there, at the time I imagined my mum scolding me for being so irresponsible with money, she had died during the winter of 1999.
I was quite bewildered, maybe thats the wrong word, bemused perhaps, staggered, I dont know, all I do know is, when I stood and looked out of the window there was the moth, motionless, looking in, I swear it was waiting till I found that money. It made me smile and, working on the ussumption that it was my mum, I said thanks, and it went in a flash, never to be seen again.
Absolute truth, no flowering up, got tears in my eyes now as I recount this tale.
Thanks for reading.
Muggsy