anghara

As always, click on pic to see bigger...

( Critters )

( Scenery )



( Winter Whimsy )

The deer, three of them this time, came stepping lightly up to my door just as the light was beginning to fail. They were maybe two or three steps away when I eased the sliding door open, very gently, and only flinched a little at the noise but waited, poised, as I rolled out a couple or three apples and a corn cob out to them onto the patio.

They were at them before the door was fully closed. Three apples and a corn cob vanished before my eyes. The deer waited for a moment, huddled into a tight group, staring at me through the glass door as night fell.

"Come back tomorrow," I said.

If I had the resources I'd have given them more - but I haven't been to the stores in a week, and what I have in the house has to last me probably another four to five days before a predicted thaw - and I figure they'd rather have SOMETHING every day than nothing at all if I run out too quickly. Oh, but it's heartbreaking the way they look at me, the way they ask mutely for help and sustenance.

I have another couple of apples and some corn ready for tomorrow. I hope the deer come again for their supper.

I left a (fairly large) corn cob out on the feeder - it's getting cool out there and the criters need it.

We just watched one of our Cheeky-species squirrels, a Douglas squirrel (one just like the one in the pic)



take the entire corn cob in his mouth - it's twice the size of him - and take it all the way down the outside deck to the far side, getting stuck at every upright on the railings but figuring out how to get past them. He climbed to the top of the railing - with the thing still in his mouth - contemplated a jump to the tree - climbed down onto the deck - *shucked* the corn a little bit - climbed up on the railing again - measured the leap - shucked the corn some more on the deck - climbed up again - LEAPED AT THE BRANCH FROM THE RAILING, with the corn cob still in his mouth - and ***MADE IT***.

I tried to take a picture but I got him just as he leaped and all I have is squirrel-and-corn-shaped blur. But I swear, we APPLAUDED. This was above and beyond the call of duty. He DESERVED that prize.

Go, Cheeky!

The gave up on the HINGES of the food bin. No, that was too slow, and too indirect.

Instead, there is now a hole a couple of centimeters in diameter *on the lid of the food bin*. A plastic lid which is a solid heavy duty plastic at least several millimeteres in diameter.

The scary thing is that I don't know what became of the plastic that used to be, um, what is now the hole. THe squirrel can't have EATEN it, surely? That would be an indigestible lump even for a determined squirrel...?

Make that two scary things. There are tooth marks on another bit of the lid. One hole wasn't enough.

I've duct-taped a metal lid over the hole - but hey, if they chewed through solid plastic a couple of pieces of duct tape are hardly going to be a problem.

I may have to invest in a metal food bin...

So, this morning, I wander into the living room and look out on the deck - and the cedar branch that the squirrel population has been using as access to the deck and bird-feeder (HAH! *Bird* feeder! that would be the day!)and which has been steadily losing strategic bits under the squirrel onslaught is now lying flat across the feeder, green cedar fronds spread all across it.

"Well, they've finally done for it," I think to myself, thinking that one squirrel too many managed to skedaddle down the thing the wrong way and broke off the whole thing.

And then I took a second look.

*ON* the branch, and the reason behind its sudden change in location, a young raccoon is perched within easy arm's reach, as it were, of the feeder, and munching away, brazen as you please.

We locked eyes, the raccoon and I, and it decided that retreat was the better part of valour after all; it minced back along the branch in question, only barely able to hold its weight, occasionally lurching ominously sideways this way and that to what MUST have been a muttered "@##!!*&@ !!!" that I couldn't hear through the closed glass doors.

It disappeared into the cedar to which the branch in question is attached.

We haven't seen it since. rdeck did inform me, however, that what I saw this morning was the young wretch's SECOND visit to the buffet, because hubby observed him earlier in the same spot using exactly the same access technique.

Yes, I know that raccoons are bad-tempered and violent and carry rabies and will eat anything that isn't nailed down. No, we can't afford to keep feeding a young raccoon. But dammit... he was cute as all get go. And he made me smile this morning. I guess he paid for his meal, in his own way.

Seriously. No April fools. I've just watched hm sneak up to one of the pillars that holds up my deck and start gnawing at the base of it for all he's worth.

Yes, we DID put food out. Yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, it IS spring, and there has to be other food starting to be available.

So what gives with nibbling treated wood, dummy?... (He's still there as I type this, glaring at me in an affronted manner for having interrupted his activities. Weird little animal.)

In other news, the copy edit is done, and will be on its way tomorrow. One more thing to cross of my list.

The hackery is still present but down to a mild roar. I am cautiously optimistic about the reading tomorrow in VIllage Books.

We now officially have Douglas squirrels (at least five of 'em!), grey squirrels, and now at least one chipmunk. Yep, saw the little guy just outside my office this morning - took a pic, but until I download it and decide if it's good enough to put online, this is pretty much what the critter looked like. Yep yep yep, a chipmunk.

He may be a refugee. They clear-cut another lot near us a couple of days ago. I saw logs that used to be 100-year-old cedars stacked neatly by the road, underneath a raped hillside covered in twisted remnants of roots and crumbling bare earth, and I wept.

Outside my window, right now: Mama Deer with two tiny, tiny, exquisite spotted baby fawns.

I love my office.

We have a hummingbird! Or two!

They look a lot like this - and I am utterly enchanted.

The cats think it's a weird kind of bug, especially since the male BUZZES when he hovers there, like a large bumblebee - and the two felines sit there with their heads lifted and raised and ack-ack-ack-ack at the intruder, not quite certain what they should do about the matter.

Tiny. Tiny, jewel-like and gorgeous. We have a HUMMINGBIRD!

(and yes, I named it Twinky. Why do you ask? [grin]