Wild wild life

Sorry (well, not really) for the post title. My two fans should know by now that just about everything in life is a song cue for me.

Um, anyway. Now that we've had our Talking Heads break, let's talk about the photos. That's right, today we're going to TALK about the photos even if it means that the blog turns into a pumpkin.

They're a bit fuzzy because they're zoomed shots, but you should still be able to tell that the top one shows a squirrel coming out of my father's squirrel feeder, and the second one is the same squirrel just before he started swearing at me.

The demonic eyes are just because of the camera flash... although I have to admit that I likes me some demonic red squirrels.

I bought the feeder for my father last year. The idea is that the squirrel goes into the hole, then into the jar for the peanuts. Red squirrels are generally pretty good at robbing bird feeders, so a purpose-built feeder really shouldn't be a problem for the squirrels to figure out.

Well, my father put up the feeder last November. And it sat. And sat. And sat. And finally this squirrel figured it out.

About two months ago.

Yep.

No one ever claimed that squirrels were especially smart.

I had another wildlife encounter in my father's yard this morning, but no pictures this time because it was raining a bit so I didn't take the camera with me. About... oh, I guess nine o'clock or so I looked out the bedroom window as I was folding my bed up and noticed a mule deer coming into the garden for breakfast. The menu today, if you're interested (or even if you're not) was sunflower seeds from the old seed heads, then leftover apples from one of the trees, then a combo of Mountain Ash (that'd be Rowan for those of you across the pond) berries and leaves, then a quick check of the bird feeder to see if anything interesting was spilled, and then... well, she moved to a part of the yard that I couldn't get a good look at through the window so I went outside to see what she was up to. Yes, that's right. I went to talk to the deer.

It's not that weird. Mulies don't spook too easily, and since it was a single doe it wasn't likely that she'd do anything but stare at me. Which is exactly what she did.

She'd been chewing on the dead sweet pea vines, which kind of surprised me. There's still enough green leaves in the yard that survived the freeze that I didn't think dried-up sweet peas would have much appeal.

At any rate, she let me get close enough that I could see she was in pretty good condition before she ambled off (yes, ambled. I told you that mulies don't spook easily), and then I went back inside to dry off.






Erm... the end, I guess. This story didn't really have a moral or anything.

Feel free to add one in the comments if you're so inclined.





Edited to add that maybe I shouldn't have linked to the Talking Heads video. Things have since become a Talking Heads fest around here. Ah well. Could be worse. Much, much worse. In the mean time, I'm an ordinary guy BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE...