Acting like a tree-hugger

First I'd like to give a shout-out to Stew- someone who ALWAYS makes me laugh. Wow- that comment about hair extensions for my armpits had me on the FLOOR! Sadly, the bearded eye-roller wouldn't be surprised by such a thing coming from me.

Back to my post. The 'thing' on the bottom of my Valentines day list is the stupid hawk that lives in the neighborhood. I was SO excited a few weeks ago that I had lots and lots of baby woodpeckers. They all flew in together to eat, and I saw at least 15 of them. It was almost surreal to see them all fly in at once and cover my woodpecker feeders; kinda like a scene out of The Birds.

I've enjoyed watching the babies move on from the feeders to the trees, but have noticed that there aren't as many as there used to be. I thought that maybe they broke up their shifts and were becoming more independent or something.

tra la la, it never occurred to me that some of them might have died...

I noticed a hawk the other day sitting in the tree in the back yard and mentioned it to BER . I've heard him squawk (or whatever hawks do) but have never seen him and thought it was really cool.

BER then shattered my perfect little Snow White/Bambi world when he told me that he's seen that hawk grab one of my precious woodpecker babies and fly off with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand that this is nature and everyone has to eat, but why can't the hawk stick to rats?

Stupid hawk. No valentine for you.

Thanks to the damned squirrels, I've had the song "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" in my head ALL.DAY.LONG.

"Hippity-hoppity, Easter's on its way.."

Screech..... Huh? Easter is NOT on its way, and I'm sure you're wondering why I'm blaming this on the squirrels.

We've had a bit of a snow here and due to the cold temperatures, it doesn't look like it's going anywhere anytime soon.


I've been watching the little tracks in the snow grow over the past few days and have been having fun trying to figure out what animal is making the various tracks.


Want to play along? Sure you do....

Look at the little hand prints in the snow. Those aren't from kids...


Now look at this- I've seen LOTS of these little tracks all over the yard. Looks like something took up skiing....


And finally, the explanation for the title of this post and the reason for the ear worm (you can thank me later...)


I thought these 'hoppy' looking tracks were from a bunny. I imagined cute little white bunnies hopping through the snow.

I thought wrong.

I was outside surveying the bird feeders (remember I take my job as feeder of all birds on the planet, very seriously) and saw a squirrel hopping through the snow, just like a little bunny. I started laughing at how absurd it looked.

And then came the ear worm. ALL.DAY.LONG.

Damned squirrels.

We've had a snow storm recently and are still experiencing freezing temps at our house, which caused my hummingbird feeder to freeze again. I took it down a couple of days ago to thaw and change the food. It's the kind that sticks to the window so I can stalk them watch them eat.



When I went to put it back up, the suction cups 'failed' and I couldn't get it to stick again no matter what I tried. OK, no matter what the bearded eye-roller tried (I gave up because I didn't want to pull any more stitches out).

BER sat it on the patio table, about three feet away, until we could come up with another solution. I saw one of my hummingbirds sitting in a tree close-by and was worried that he was going to starve if we didn't put it back exactly where it was. I went into the sunroom and worried some more and then I saw him fly to the old feeding place and kind of hover there as if he was saying, "what the hell happened here?, where's my food?"

I started getting upset, but then he must have caught the feeder out of the corner of his eye and then flew straight to it and started eating.

While this is a good solution for now, I'm starting to obsess about the other hummingbirds and whether they'll be smart enough to find it.

Sometimes I think I take my job as the feeder of the entire neighborhood of birds a little too seriously.

In any case, I'll be shopping for a new hummingbird feeder that doesn't require suction cups. Hummingbird feeders- who knew they could be so exciting?

All the critters in my neck of the woods know that our place is the place to go if you want to eat. We feed 'em all. Squirrels, a gazillion types of birds, raccoons (unintentionally), and even rats (COMPLETELY UNINTENTIONALLY!). Oh yeah, and humans. I've heard people joke that I like to cook as if I'm feeding an entire army.

Yeah, so? I don't want anyone to go hungry. Sue me.

I take this responsibility very seriously (except for the raccoons and rats), so you can imagine my dismay when I saw my poor hummingbirds unsuccessfully trying to feed out of a completely frozen feeder.

I did a google search, because surely there was something you can do about frozen hummingbird food. Turns out that typically, the hummingbirds migrate south before it gets to the point of freezing. If they haven't, then they depend on suckers humans to feed them.

Ahem.. that'd be me.

So, after obsessing about the poor starving hummingbirds (I have four that I know of), I decided to trudge out into the freezing cold (barefoot and walking for miles and miles, by the way) to retrieve the hummingbird feeder.

I brought it in, melted the ice, and replaced it with warm sugar water.

I caught some great photos of a couple of VERY happy hummingbirds, once I replaced the feeder.


More pictures can be found on my flickr site.

Now, the next issue is that I'm out of regular bird food and am not brave enough to go down my driveway to the store.

Just another thing to obsess about.... My poor starving birds.

Thankfully, I'm not out of wine (that's for me- not the birds, by the way).

I saw a RAT scurrying across my garage floor two nights ago. It creeped me out, but good.

We knew there were mice in the garage(s) when we bought the place, because we saw those mouse poison boxes scattered here and there. That bugged me, but the bearded eye-roller has been good about 'dealing' with that. But rats? Ugggh!

I haven't seen any evidence that there are rodents in the house, thank goodness. But now I'm paranoid to go into the garage, so when I do- I make a big scene so the vermin know I'm coming. I open, then shut (loudly!), then open the door again before going in the garage.

BER and I have decided to hire a pest company to take care of the, erm, situation. I asked our Realtor (and now friend) who he recommended, because I assumed he's needed to get rid of this sort of thing when listing homes a time or two.

He told me that it was probably our bird feeders attracting these ugly creatures. He said that his neighbors have taken down their bird feeders and it's helped tremendously.

I *love* my bird feeders and I love my birds! Our back yard has hundreds of birds (no exaggeration) because I have several types of feeders (two types of suet feeders; thistle seed feeder for the finches; woodpecker feeder for the woodpeckers; hummingbird feeder; 'general' feeder for the other various birds; and a flat feeder for the jays, mourning doves, and squirrels) and I always make sure there is food for them. I've seen a rat or three in the flat bird feeder and it's grossed me out, but I got over it because it's OUTSIDE.

I'm not willing to give that up- but I also don't want to worry about seeing a rat any time I go into one of the garages. Yech.

I'll call the pest company and go from there, I guess. Thankfully, BER knows that by having pets of the wild variety (birds and squirrels), it's kept my wishing for a puppy at bay and I don't think he wants to jeopardize that. I'm pretty sure he'll agree to buck up for the cost of monthly pest service, just to keep me from whining about wanting a puppy. He's smart like that.

Realistically, I don't think there is any way to keep the rats away if I have something attracting them. The pest company can keep trapping them, but we live in a very rural area so they'll just keep coming, I'm afraid.

Tra-la-la.... I'll pretend this isn't happening. That's my solution to just about everything.