Suspicious Comings and Goings

TimberDoodle in Snow: Cold Feet in April  by Deb Marshall

 It may be spring when you read this (Ha! Snowing again today!), and I may have had a parsimonious parsnip sighting (not yet!) and possibly even feasting, and the woodcock, or timberdoodle as we call it here, may be hopefully peeting for wives (he started last night – before the snow started), but as I’m writing the season has not yet turned, the weather gods just recently dumped a fresh two-foot-deep pile of snow on top of the dregs of the old, and I can only reflect on what a strange and disturbing winter it has been. The latest nor’easter was useful, in a way – it gave me a day off from work, time to finally get my seed orders sent out, so I now peer into the mail box daily, hoping for packages. 

I hadn’t seen a grey squirrel all winter, but very very early one morning – I was up because one of the barkie boys had had a restless night – I looked out and there was a great, fat, cocky one sitting on the wart railing, flicking its tail insolently and cramming in sunflower seeds as fast as he could. Catman was thrilled and dashed out after it, and it led him on a fair-thee-well chase over driveway and up snowbank, down bank and over pond, finally winning taunting rights after he’d dashed up a maple tree. Catmandoo never exerts His Massiveness to tree-climbing, having endured the humiliation of the erection of a ladder and ascent of a mere human to pry him off limb and carry him down ladder when he was still a pup: what goes up easily does not always come down easily or willingly (let’s all remember that truth of nature next time we vote). 

When I was a pup myself, my best friend, PowderPuff, figured out that if she climbed the ladder leaning against the house and sashayed along the narrow overhang that was 3 feet below the second story windows, she could sit just below my bedroom window and yowl to wake me up. ‘Twasn’t her problem to figure out how I was going to get her up the last 3 feet and through the window into my bedroom. It took three scary rescue excursions before the humans-in-charge thought that just maybe they should remove the ladder. What one puts up, does not always come down fast enough (ditto above).

Catmandoo Up a Tree: What Ascends On High Doesn't Like To Come Down  by Deb Marshall

We had several sightings of red squirrels through the winter, so the furries spent a number of very busy days patrolling the firewood stacks. It kept them occupied, not a bad thing when cabin fever and the news was taking its toll on man and beast, but the squirrels were always long gone before the furries  fully engaged. It takes awhile to rouse from a catnap in a basket near the woodstove, alert a human to let one out, then barrel out in hot pursuit; the object of the chase is usually high in a pine by the time one gets up to full speed, but hope springs eternal.

Last winter some critter chewed a small hole in the corner of the front screen door, which is just 9 feet from the railing where I set out winter bird seed. We wondered why the furries spent so much time lying in the cold hall, staring intently at the snowed-in front door. Come spring when we roused that door from its winter rest, we discovered why: a cascade of sunflower seeds poured into the hall when the inside door was opened, from the critter’s lovely between-doors nest and larder near the birdseed take-out joint. 

That door got fixed and the furries didn’t spend much time patrolling hall or cellar this winter - a nearly full-time job last winter. I had no sightings of any actual mice, though a lovely nest made up of dryer lint and grasses came in with one load of fire wood. I did find several mouse droppings atop the metal bins in which I store birdseed at the bottom of the cellar stairs, and lived in dread that one morning before I was fully awake I’d lift a lid to scoop seed, and scoop a malingering mouse as well.  I think the handsome red foxes we saw last spring and from time to time strolling up our long driveway all winter, and the funky critter who spent last summer in the compost bin, and the owls we hear hooting and occasionally see as a flash of white overhead in our headlights, have helped the furries reduce the Mouse Colony to a manageable, mostly external, population again. (Or, at least I did think so; this past week Beastreau and the Man have fetched four mice that I know of out of the cellar upstairs to the kitchen to chase and eventually eat – my personal illegal immigration controllers.)

 I have no malice towards mice in general, but one very late night Catman the Hunter decided it would be a good thing to bring me his latest – still very alive – catch, so I could play with it. At 3 am I proved unequal to the task, so he left it next to my bed and took off in a fluff of disgust. I spent most of the remains of the night wondering if I was going to be joined under the warm covers by a traumatized mouse. Two weeks later I found the dead mouse’s body entombed at the back of my sock drawer. As places to die go, it could have been worse, for the mouse and for me, but I’ve never been so pleased that we don’t heat the upstairs bedrooms.

Mouse with Seed, by Deb Marshall

We didn’t see trail or pawprint of the critter in the compost all winter, but it was such an odd winter of melting and blowing we might not have recognized any signs. Not knowing what the critter actually was, I don’t know if it moved on after the elections, was hibernating, or quite active but invisibly responsible for the reduced mouse and squirrel sightings. If it’s still around, we’ll probably know soon – the compost will soften, in spite of current weather indications, and spring cleaning of burrows is apt to happen anon.

Odd times lead to odd meetings. Last month a friend and I spent hours watching an opossum in a tree not far from her window, busily munching dried berries or rosy leaf buds. Possum stopped his meal briefly but didn’t retreat as some walkers and their dogs passed by, oblivious, and wasn’t bothered by windows flung open so humans could see better. 

Rarely seen and mostly active at night, this ‘possum turned its aversion to risk-taking upside down, inside out. Considering the whacky political climate, that might be a reasonable response. (I wonder if Possum is one of those many thousands of illegal voters NH supposedly hosts?)

Years ago, two raccoons made a barn roof in Elkins into their bedroom – another highly suspicious activity. Despite the numbers of folks who came by to peer at them – the roof was clear of all trees, so they were very unusually out in plain sight – the duo stayed curled up and conked out all day, and found the accommodations so fine, they repeated their public snooze next day. By the third day the raccoon pair was nowhere in sight – much like this winter’s Mouse Colony.

Maybe their visas were revoked.

For the blog alone: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com.     You’ll find me busy monitoring suspicious comings and goings.