Of Squirrels and Men

Why do men always think they have to fix things?  Lately, squirrels have been overrunning our bird feeder, while hungry little songbirds wait, high in the trees, hoping there will be some small morsel left for them when the gluttony is over.  In his attempt to right the situation, my husband Don, the fixer in question, has been shooting squirrels.

There, it's out.

When Don was young, he hunted squirrels, in part, to assuage his hunger, but they were hard to clean, and nowadays we have better options for meals.  As much as he hates wasting meat, all it takes to send him running for his gun is to see a fat squirrel hogging the bird feeder. I'm not condoning or condemning this behavior, only relating the facts.

Don tells me in his defense that squirrel season is open, he has his hunting license, and there are hundreds of squirrels on our property.  As he puts it, "since they have abundant crops of acorns, hickory nuts, walnuts, and other squirrel menu items, why should they have to eat the bird seed?  I only shoot the bad guys.  They're the ones that don't stop with eating the bird seed; they're not content until they eat the bird feeder, too. "

Don's slaughter of these defenseless animals has had some unintended consequences. Vultures have started camping out behind our house, fighting over the squirrels, messing up the patio, and cleaning out the shell of a recently diseased snapping turtle (let's not get into how that happened).

  

The other afternoon, while I was working downstairs, I heard a peck on the window and went up to investigate.  There, sitting in the bird feeder, was a black vulture, demanding his squirrel for lunch.

And where were all the songbirds?  Well, naturally, those poor little things were high in the trees, waiting, once again, for a place at the feeder.

The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.

Robert Burns






Linking with Wild Birds Wednesday
and Your Sunday Best

Three's a Crowd

Woodpiles and Acorns

On cold winter days, we burn wood in our furnace.  Don always has at least 4 cords of wood stacked as we go into the winter.  A serious cold snap is forecasted for next week, and it appears that, for the first time, we'll go through the entire stack well before the winter's over.  So we spent some time this afternoon adding to the woodpile.  Don felled a dead tree, in exactly the right spot, and he cut it up while I dragged off the excess limbs and stacked wood.  We've been doing this for years, and it feels like good teamwork, with Don as the master woodsman, and me, the woodsman's assistant, both wearing our Danner steel-toed boots.  Next year, we'll have a bigger pile.

We weren't the only ones to be playing catch-up this winter. We don't see squirrels too often on cold snowy days like this, but there was one in the yard today, who thought that he'd put away plenty of acorns for the winter.  This morning he was plowing under the snow for acorns.

He'd emerge, white capped, to eat his acorn, before diving down for the next one.

Next year, he'll have a bigger stash.

Dogwood Berry Breakfast

We've had a cool snap lately, with pristine air and high barometer skies, the change we've all been waiting for. Our recent hot, wet  summer has been producing a lavish harvest for the wildlife.  Hickory nuts have fallen in abundance, persimmons are ripening early, as did paw paw, and acorns are larger than any in recent memory.  The dogwood tree in our front yard, recently loaded with berries, is now nearly devoid of them and their faded remains carpet the ground.

In my journal of two years ago, I note that the berries from that same tree didn't ripen until late November that year.  Two days after Thanksgiving, on a cold gray morning, as Don and I were just getting ready to pour milk on our Grapenuts and granola, we heard a raucous commotion in the front yard.  We looked out to see a Pileated Woodpecker squabbling with some squirrels over a tree full of ripe dogwood berries. It seemed to me that there were plenty to go around.  For the next half hour I stood transfixed by the window as birds and squirrels feasted on this late Thanksgiving dinner.

Two Flickers arrived for the feast, decked out in their finery, right down to the bright orange triangle on the back of their necks.  They looked like little stuntmen, as they twisted and turned, and reached over backwards to grasp the tasty Dogwood morsels.  They were followed by a flock of Robins, who bolted the berries down in one quick gulp.  Blue Jays were next.  They would carefully pick the berries, one at a time, then fly to a sturdy limb where they would dismantle them, discard the shiny red exterior, and eat out the center seed.  Then the squirrels were back, running along the limbs and stretching out to reach the berries and doing a flip-turn back to their branch, were they savored their treat, before diving for the next one.

One year, a flock of Cedar Waxwings swooped down and stripped the tree of berries in one day. At that time I assumed,  since they knew where this great tree was, they’d come back for the harvest every year, but we never saw the phenomenon again.

I'm not sure what the creatures will be having for Thanksgiving this year, but chances are, they'll have plenty in their pantry.