It’s a magical time of year on social media, all cherry blossom and wisteria. My Instagram account – 50% animals and 50% adverts for bad trousers – is a serotonin-saturated riot of frolicking baby goats, sproinging lambs and fluffy chicks. Scrolling as I neck antihistamines, I’m high on spring and becoming inter-species broody.
“Let’s get an emu!” I say expansively to my husband, a man who is always willing to entertain a grand plan. Last year, he measured our garden before regretfully concluding we couldn’t accommodate a capybara after I found out they can be legally kept in the UK.
He didn’t need to pour logistical cold water on this latest suggestion, because our existing menagerie did it for us with their problematic behaviours. The tortoises are out of hibernation and treating the greenhouse – their mid-season accommodation – like an airport pub, brawling, breaking stuff, staggering around and capsizing as they try to escape, then lying stuck on their backs, little limbs pedalling feebly. Barely rewarmed, the worst, sex-pest tortoise has already started his campaign of bitey, rutting terror, requiring his detention in solitary confinement in the house, where he spends his days ramming his shell repetitively into any hard surface he can find.
The hens have gone rogue, too. One is laying eggs on the sloped top of a 6ft wall, which goes as well as you’d imagine. Another has started absenting herself, catlike, overnight, causing intense consternation, slinking home in the morning to be fed. With all the self-preservation instincts of a panda, how long will she survive? Two more have been in a prolonged hormonal fog for months, holed up in the nestbox, trying to hatch imaginary eggs.
Then there’s the poor old dog, near-toothless, confused, staggering towards his 15th birthday, a furry, urine-scented memento mori. All his senses are failing, except whichever makes him bark us awake at five every morning and an unerring ability to detect and spit out his numerous medications, however well wrapped in ham they are. Would it be wise to add anything else to the mix? Absolutely not. Will that stop me? TBC.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
