What a strange place for an animal to live!

Sometimes after I've been on holiday it can take me a few days to fully unpack and empty my rucksack. Often when I do a final search round the bottom of the rucksack I'll find an odd lost sock that's been there since the previous time I was away. This is irritating, but not life threatening.

Today, whilst finishing emptying my camping rucksack, I found something else:



Yes, a small, yet quite cute giraffe had been living in there - probably since Christmas. Or maybe even Christmas 2003, since I think I may have used my suitcase when I went home last year. It must be one of the Christmases though - Yule is the only sensible time that I could have obtained a giraffe.

I wonder what he's been eating all that time? There certainly wasn't a lot of normal giraffe food in the rucksack ie leaves from tall trees. Perhaps he was hibernating like a hedgehog. And because it's always dark at the bottom of a rucksack, he simply hadn't realised that summer had arrived - possibly more than once. So whilst there was ongoing continual darkness, the giraffe continued to sleep.

But now he's awake. Maybe I should set him free back into the wild. Then Bill Oddie could study him and make more television programmes. I'd love to see the confusion on his face as a giraffe cantered past him through a British oak forest.