The Squire went to get something out of the car last night, and stuck his head in the door to motion for me to come outside.
The dog was racing and chasing, having a grand time – with a coyote!
We called the dog back to the house, but the coyote stayed out by the barn, cautious, but not particularly afraid, eating the food we’d put out for the foxes. He sat down and looked at us for a few moments, and then trotted back into the woods.
Yesterday afternoon, I went up to get the last of the laundry out of the way, and as I was loading my car, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation in the next row over on the parking lot. A woman – maybe in her mid-40s to 50-ish – was talking so loudly on her cell phone that I doubted the folks to whom she was speaking actually needed the phone. Her male companion was watching her with amusement.
“Honey, you wouldn’t believe the bugs up here! Everywhere! I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was getting away from that stuff. And frogs! I thought they were extinct! You can’t walk out in the grass for them things hoppin’ and flappin’ around. I have to keep my shoes on, because I’m afraid they’re gonna bite me!”
At that, the man with her turned away and I could tell he was laughing. I leaned around, and asked him,”Where is she from?”
“Baltimore.”
There is no system on earth that a raccoon will not try to outwit. We bought this suet feeder about a week ago, not so much because it is squirrel proof, but to keep the bloody grackles and starlings from eating everything in sight.
To fill it, you unscrew the knob on top, drop two suet cakes into the “pockets” and then hang it from a convenient place.
The first night it was up, the local gang of raccoons managed to unhook it from the post, nearly pulling said post out of the ground in the process, and then rolled it across the lawn and into the stream, where they abandoned it. They did manage to reach in and dig out most of one suet cake. Mind you, there was a dish with three cups of dry food already on the patio for easy access.
Last night I left my car window rolled down about half-way – and this mess is entirely my own fault – and the raccoons managed to squeeze through the narrow opening and play havoc with two bags of peanuts I left on the back seat. Bless him, The Squire took on the job of vacuuming out the mess, and retrieving my personal belongings from the peanut shells.
He put all the peanuts and shells that looked worth keeping in a plastic sack and put it on the patio behind him while he finished running the vacuum. Instead of grabbing peanuts out of the top of the open bag, the brazen squirrels came up behind him and chewed a hole in the bottom of the bag – which he discovered when he picked it up to move it.
Ain’t country linving grand?
thisendoftheswamp 