Sharing the yard

Ok, I'll be honest. I don't have anything today and I really want to spend a bit of time looking at the Illustration Friday entries that have been posted so far before I pack up and head to my place, so for a change I'm going to talk (briefly) about the pointless photo instead of completely ignoring it.

My father shares his yard with a fair amount of wildlife. The birds that anyone who's ever put up a feeder would expect, of course, a few mule deer (who definitely qualify as both a blessing and a curse. Great to look at; not so great for the garden), and... squirrels.

Red Squirrels.

Now, I know that a lot of people find the squirrels annoying, but personally I'm pretty fond of them. They're completely obnoxious, and for something that is food for so many other animals, fairly audacious in the way they'll cuss everybody out (and yes, I'm done anthropomorphising for the moment). They're also endlessly entertaining to watch in their hyperactive activities.

The squirrels are starting to hoard for the winter this time of year, and one of the neighbourhood critters has apparently decided that the blue spruce in the front yard is a great place to hang out. Not surprising -- it provides a lot of shelter, has a lot of cones, and also has a couple of feeders on it -- but the degree of take-over is quite something to see. Not only has he filled a bird bath under the branches with a stash of cones; he's also decided that his own feeder is now his storage shed.

Thus the photo.

What you're seeing there is a feeder that's designed so that squirrels can go in the hole to access the jar and grab the peanuts we put in. I guess this particular squirrel figured that if the jar is good for storing peanuts then it would be EXTRA good for storing spruce cones...

Ah well, more power to him. And it'll save us buying peanuts for a while, so that's all right too.





And with that, I'm off to the art.