Thoughts from Crow Cottage (My Main Blog.)
crowbelle's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Winter Thaw? Winter Thaw Today has been like spring here. Warm(ish) and sunny. A lot of the snow has melted and is dripping heavily from the rooftops, and there's almost no snow left on the back deck at all. Last week and the week before, I have been putting out a dish of peanuts in shells for the many squirrels that live nearby. They've had fun - especially in the deep snow when scavenging for food has been tough on them. They sure love peanuts! Well, all this week I had run out of peanuts. So today I got 2 big bags of them at the food store. I went out and got their dish (it's just a plastic pot tray and I keep a big beach rock in the middle of it to keep it from blowing away) and washed it all up and filled all around the rock with fresh peanuts. Rather than place it on the floor under the bench on the deck, I set it in the top of a pot that sits on top of the bench this time. Makes it a bit easier for them and the birds to find. Usually, after I've been out on the deck doing something, the squirrels won't visit for a little while. I understand. They are wary of humans. So after I shoveled off the excess snow from the deck, and cleaned and filled the peanut dish, and refilled their (heated) water bowl out there, I went in and sat in my chair just inside the slider doors to wait for them to discover the nuts and celebrate. I love squirrels, as you may have guessed. I love to see them happy. Some look like they've lived tough lives, too. They have shabby-looking tails, and maybe a chunk bitten out of an ear or two. Some have scars on their furs... etc. It's a squirrel-eat-squirrel world up there in those trees, I guess, not to mention all the unlucky ones I see flattened on the roads. (I hate that!) So, I'm sitting here doing nothing but looking out at the nut dish and enjoying the sound of melting snow, when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement at the edge of the deck. Nope, it wasn't a squirrel nutkin, but a relative of the "Raoul-the-rat" family who also live nearby (probably under the concrete sidewalk down in the back yard. Raoul and his family have been regular visitors (co-residents more like it) here for the 20 years we've lived here and probably way longer than that. On and off. Back when I was regularly feeding the birds out front with seed, especially in the dead of winter when there was a foot of snow covering the earth, Raoul and his cousins would shinny up the pole to the bird feeder and feast on the seed. Then Paul decided to put a stop to that. He set some traps and apparently got them. I asked not to be told about it... and he respected my wishes. They stopped coming for a long time. But today, either Raoul (or one of his descendants since Raoul Sr. would have to be 20 years old by now) came up on the back deck (which is a full story height off the ground) and he was sniffing the air, seeming to know that food was nearby. Normally people will jump in fright at the sight of a rat (I hate that word... I wish there was another name for them...even the word "rodent" has a negative connotation to it and I don't much like that name either). Anyway, he was sneaking around the deck between the various pots and chairs and bench that I have out there... with his little pointy noise quivvering like mad, trying to locate the peanuts. I wasn't too happy about all of this, although I wasn't frightened either. As long as they are outside the confines of my house, it's ok.. and as long as they run like mad when I step foot outside the house...ok, too. WOWSER! (he must have said to himself) Paydirt! He got one big peanut (in the shell, mind you) and hauled it down and over to a corner behind a planter and proceeded to figure out how to get into the shell and eat the good parts. That took quite a little while, maybe 10 minutes. Then he retraced his exact tracks back up the pot, onto the bench, up onto the arm of the bench, and onto the next pot and got himself a second peanut. Now he knows what he has to do. Take one peanut at a time, down over all those obstacles, down the long stairway to the back yard, and into the hole where the entrance to his home-sweet-home is, and share the wealth with all his relatives - brothers, sisters, mom, dad, cousins, uncles, aunts, etc. who live in there with him (I am guessing he has relatives, because I don't see two or more of them at a time, usually only the one). He was gone for maybe 15 minutes, and then he appeared again... retracing his exact steps up to the dish, and grabbed one more nut. Funny.... he tried as hard as he could to fit two nuts into his tiny mouth... but they just wouldn't go... so he shrugged and said to himself "one will have to do for now..." and went back down the stairs. I'm sitting here thinking, darn! If he keeps this up, one peanut at a time, he will empty that whole dish of peanuts and the squirrels won't get ANY! So I made the decision to put an end to Raoul's fun and take the dish of nuts back into the house. And here it sits. Bummer. A little while later, I saw that one of my squirrel-nutkins came by the deck sniffing around in the spot where the peanut dish used to sit, and there was nothing for him. I haven't seen Raoul again today. No nuts, no Raoul... the squirrel came back a little while later (or his sister or brother) and I got a handful of the peanuts and gently and quietly opened the sliding door and tossed them out onto the deck, but that little noise scared him so he quickly jumped and ran away into the woods. Those few peanuts are still scattered on the deck and no one has been back to get them yet. The sun is setting, too, and it seems the critters only come up here in the daylight hours. We'll see. Tomorrow, if the nuts are gone, I'll know it was Raoul (or his ilk) that came in the night to retrieve them. Because the squirrels head for their high tree nests at dusk and don't come back down until sunrise. I told this story to Paul and he said "I'll have to put out some poison." I hate that part. I don't want Raoul in or even very near my house really, but I wouldn't wish a gruesome painful death on them either. But such is life, I just wish it didn't have to be so hard to survive in the world for all these guys. It's just another afternoon with all the creatures, great and small, at Crow Cottage. Cheers, Bex 4:24 pm - 28 January 2006 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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