Tag Archives: birdseed

Service, Please!

10 Apr

I swear, The Squire and I spend about as much on critter food as we do on our own. In addition to catering to the whims of Blazer and Eddie, we put out cheap dog food for the foxes, stale bread and corn for the deer, and seed and peanuts for the birds and squirrels.

Apparently, we don’t move quite fast enough for some folks around here.

A squirrel just jumped up, caught his claws on the rim of the storm window, and gave us both a blast of the finest. “The service in the restaurant is just awful! Do you know we are completely out of peanuts at table five? What kind of joint are you humans running, anyway?” And then he hopped down and stalked off in a huff.

And, obediently, The Well Trained Waiter went out and tossed seed and peanut across the ground.

 

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The Birdseed Blunder

27 Dec

The way we blow through birdseed around here you’d think they were going to stop packaging it.

We get most of our seed, a blend called Tree Nutty, at a place called “Wild Birds, Unlimited”. It’s a bit pricey, but they give us a nice discount, plus a $10 rebate for every $200 we spend, and I hate to admit how much we’re “earned”.  And then there’s the peanuts…

This is supposed to be a bad winter (although it is nearly the New Year and the temps all week have been in the 40s and 50s during the day) so I purchased a couple of bags of really cheap seed at the grocery store. When it snows we get starlings and grackles; they push everybody else out of the way, and shovel down whatever they can find, so “let ’em eat milo” is my attitude. Not even the blue jays will touch the stuff! (If you don’t know what this is, it resembles miniature dog kibble. I understand pheasants like it, but that is one of the few birds we don’t have here.)

When we went to the Y on Monday, we were running low but we figured we’d be up there again Wednesday morning, and could stock up then. Well, first The Squire and then I came down with bronchitis, and we not only didn’t make it to the Y, we didn’t get to church, or to Christmas Dinner with the in-laws.

Thursday (Christmas Day) I had to break open my stash of emergency birdseed, and let tell you, it was NOT greeted with enthusiasm. We have two feeders on the hook closest to the house, and the squirrels frequently get the square one spinning, so it comes unscrewed and falls on the ground.  I just left it there and filled it with the seed. Rather than eat from the tray at the bottom, the squirrels stood on their hind legs and reached down into the feeder, looking for something fit to eat. One enterprising fellow finally climbed into the feeder and was digging around, wildly throwing seed into the air, all willy-nilly.

This morning, The Squire hauled himself up the road and got Tree Nutty and finch food, so all is forgiven and there is once again peace in the valley.

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