Saturday, February 5, 2011

Squirrels and other wild animals


One of the marks of truly settling in seems to be setting in place a bird feeder. I'm not sure we have had this luxury in any of the places we have lived in before.  The boys Grandaddy made us a lovely one and installed it last Saturday and now things seem to be complete. Since the initial installation not a bird has come near it (even with my futile attempts at scattering seed all over the grass and banister) but there is a very fun squirrel who is constantly teasing us with his presence.  Every time we see him we all sneak up as quietly as possible and let our vicious dog Lucy out for the chase. She has come close several times to snatching some bit of the tail but the squirrel definitely seems to have an advantage over her (one being that it can climb trees and unfortunately she has yet to figure this skill out). 
All this squirrel watching and chasing made our school day very lively and prompted me to bring out my binoculars.  The ones I have clung to ever since my parents got them for me and have moved them with me to each new location (which has probably totaled at least 8 or 10 moves). They are something everyone loves to have around but never remembers to get out. Well, we have finally gotten them out and our backyard has become a safari adventure. 

1 comment:

brite said...

We haven't been able to use our window bird feeder because of the style of our new windows, but I miss it! And now our binoculars permanently reside on the kitchen windowsill, which does come in handy.

When my brothers were going to a private school they once took a whole week off to study birds after one built a nest by the school room window. That's always made me feel better about the concept of "messing up" your school day to discover something new!