Stones of wild cherries and a cotton mouse

The plan was to clean the stones of Boggy Brae wild cherries in a hot water solution of sodium percarbonate so that I can make a cherry stone bag to warm up in the microwave oven and stuff into this mouse for a sick child. The photo to the left shows my first experimental batch.

The cotton mouse used to be Toadlet's but I'm going to pass it on to the grandsons.

The cleaning process worked quite well, and inspecting the gnaw marks on the stones where bank voles or wood mice had opened them to take out the kernel was interesting, but some of the stones had a covering of what I think is a black resupinate fungus which I didn't think would be good to have in a warming bag.

I guess my old wild cherry stones from under the soggy dead leaves of monbretia were not quite fresh enough for the purpose. Ah well, I daresay a purchased cherry stone bag, probably made with the stones of cultivated cherries, will work just as well. Or a wheat bag. Or some such.

It's good to see that the wild cherry stones are a useful source of food for some small animals.