Damsons and snakes

A couple of weeks ago I read a letter in the Times from a woman who had found pigeons had eaten the leaves (and some of the unripe fruit) from her plum tree. She had put a toy snake in the tree as a deterrent.

My damson tree is nearly naked of leaves but the branches have lots of fruit so I rushed to the city's toy shops to find I wasn't the first copycat. Two had sold out and one only had two left, but all told me they had been told about this pigeon deterrent.

Now that I have spent some money I'm told that leaving a coiled hose underneath my tree would have been sùffìcient!