From the kitchen, we could see Minerva - our tiny, runt-like tabby cat - sitting up by the gate chewing on something.

"Oh, she's just biting the head off a vole," we thought, as you do. Our cats like a nice warm vole for breakfast.

I strolled outside to say hello. As I got closer, I realised it was bigger than a vole. At first, I thought she might have found and killed the mole we recently saved (at extreme peril to ourselves - see the 'Wild wildlife' at the WebVivant blog).

But there was something wrong. The thing she was chewing on was still big, but it clearly had no head.

And then I knew. Mini was snacking on the rear half of a rabbit. When complete, the creature must have been nearly the same size as the cat. An impressive kill.

I left her to it. But that wasn't good enough for her.

We had breakfast, and just as I headed off to the office I noticed something on the living room floor.

Mini had had her fill. She couldn't manage a whole rabbit and so had thoughtfully left us the hind legs, delicately crossed in a balletic pose. How thoughtful.

It was obvious something wasn't quite right.

First, I saw Mini, our nearly one year-old kitten, with her nose jammed under the sofa. A mouse, I thought. It'll keep. Or it'll be a snack.

Ten minutes later, Mini had obviously got bored and wandered off. But now it was Zola, our Breton spaniel, with his nose wedged under the furniture. He whimpered from time to time, but that's dogs for you.

We were having tea by then, so we figured we'd leave the rescue until we'd finished.

We're accustomed to having wildlife in the house. I've rescued two owls from the flue that runs from the wood-burner. We've had a flock of starlings. There's a fouine (stone marten) that lives in the attic from time to time. Grass snakes have turned up in the photolibrary and outside the bedroom window. Toads and lizards are occasional visitors. And there have been rats in the ceiling (had to get rid of those). Every year, kestrels nest in a hole in the outside wall. We can hear the chicks twittering when we have a bath.

We see mice, voles and shrews all the time - usually brought in by the cats who play with the tiny critters until they break. Sometimes the cats eat them, often they prefer a bowl of crunchies after all that exertion.

After tea, we re-arranged the furniture and pulled the sofa forward ready to pounce on the mouse or vole.

Being prepared for a tiny rodent, the sight of a young rabbit gave us quite a shock. The change of scale made us jump. Not that the bunny was exactly huge, as you can see from the picture (though Trish's gardening glove does make it look even smaller). It was not exactly a baby, but definitely very young.

How it got under the sofa is anybody's guess. None of our animals are owning up to it. Trish dropped it back into the pheasant enclosure in the neighbour's field. It's an entire wood, fenced off against the foxes and fouines and the most likely place near here to find a rabbit warren. I hope it found its way home.

Zola found him. He's never been trained as a hunting dog, but there he was pointing for all he was worth at a patch of long grass under one of the old pear trees.

This happened a few years ago, but I was reminded of it while writing about a grass snake's visit to our office a couple of days ago.

We went to check what Zola was getting excited about. He kept nosing into the grass then jerking back.

We saw the snake straight away, which gave us pause. We'd seen plenty before, of course. We frequently used corrugated roofing sheets or 'paillage' plastic sheeting to suppress weeds in areas of the garden. During Summer, lifting any shelter like that will reveal either a grass snake or a slow worm.

This was a big one, though. And he might not like being disturbed during lunch. At that point, the toad seemed to be sitting, in a rather unconcerned way, on top of the coiled snake. But its state of mind was betrayed by the whitish poison that oozed like nervous sweat.

Trish rushed to the office to get on the web and double-check that it was a grass snake and nothing more dangerous. I ran to the house to grab a camera. By the time I got back, the toad was in the snake's mouth and not looking happy.

Regardless of what kind of snake it might be, I calculated that I could approach quite close because the snake was busy swallowing its meal. I closed in for the picture. The snake spat out the toad, struck out at me and hissed savagely.

By the time I walked back to where the snake was, it had resumed its feast. Trish arrived to say that it was definitely a grass snake, and that hissing very loudly is one of its two main defence mechanisms. The other is pretending to be dead, which seems a lousy way of avoiding being eaten, but then not every animal likes carrion.

We left the snake to its lunch and the toad to its fate. This is nature, after all, and even snakes have to eat.

We thought it was insects, at least for the first two years. We kept finding the bark stripped from saplings and the fresh growth and buds nipped from the roses and other shrubs. But it was never enough damage to warrant serious countermeasures.

Then Trish did a little more research and roe deer became our prime suspect. And suddenly it all made sense.

We'd noticed that the areas of grass we allow to grow long under some of the mature trees had been flattened in places. We'd put this down to summer rainstorms and the antics of our dog, Zola. We'd also noticed trails in the grass coming under the barbed-wire fence. That'll be Scott, the neighbour's dog, we thought. We'd even seen some small shrubs flattened and bent. The dogs playing, we concluded.

To test the deer theory, I tried setting up a webcam in the office window, but its resolution was too low. Then, just a few days after we'd started suspecting deer damage, there he was.

I spotted him from the kitchen window in the dusk light. We scurried upstairs to the office and watched as he casually strolled the garden, nibbling a leaf here, a shrub there. I snapped a few pictures using a 300mm lens (equivalent to a 450mm on the digital camera) but he was at the far side of the garden, 100m away, and the light was now very low. So the pictures are a little blurry.

It's probably the same lone buck that has been causing the damage for the past three years. They rub against nice, springy saplings to relieve the itching in their antlers.

He's killed only a couple of trees, and those were self-seeded cherries, so no great loss. And his grazing does only superficial damage to the shrubs. So we're happy to share the garden with him.

We share our house, and I don't just mean with our dog and six cats. Nor do I mean the recent infestation of bees (harmless enough) and the occasional mouse (just what do those cats do exactly?).

All kinds of animals turn up from time to time. We've had huge toads in the basement, owls in the stove flue — we've rescued two so far — and a flock of starlings. Various kinds of beetles wander through. However, today brought a new experience.

I was in one of the rooms in our converted attic. I have a desk pushed against the side wall that was constructed just under one of the main roof beams. Behind the wall, then, is a small and unreachable attic space. Working at my computer my attention was caught by a movement just at the edge of the desk, in the shadow of the beam. Whatever made it had disappeared, but after a moment's reflection I concluded that I'd seen the tip of a cat's tail.

I looked under the desk. No cat. But while I searched something else appeared — something long, thin and with a flickering forked tongue.

Sitting bolt upright once more, I examined the rat's nest of cables behind the computer monitor. And sure enough, wound into the cables and around the nice warm UPS was a young grass snake.

We get plenty of them in the garden. One even left its old skin hanging outside our bedroom window one year. And we found a particularly large specimen busily feasting on a massive toad out in the orchard. But this was the first to venture into the house.

It is, of course, unseasonably cold and wet. The snake can be forgiven for seeking out somewhere a little more comfortable. But he seemed a little less willing than me to share this space. As I watched, he slid stealthily through the tiny gap between wall and beam that he'd used to break in. Within a few seconds he'd gone. I'm rather hoping he'll be back. It's nice to have guests.