Counter to my own judgement, I gave into the wife’s demands that we continue to feed birds just long enough that our company from the Cities would have some 'wildlife here’ when they came up here last weekend.
I had to go to Wannaska about 2:00, for beer and stuff anyway, so I picked up a 40# bag of sunflowers to appease the little woman. Arriving home, of course I grab the most important items first, one of which I carry it to the house so it can retain its refrigerated coolness on the floor of our heated-floor basement (You gotta know where its heated and where its not) and leave the bag of sunflowers in the bed of the closed tailgate truck bed, thinking I’d put it in the house later. But I forgot.
Passing by the truck the next morning, about eleven o'clock, I walked out toward the corral where the trail camera is and noticed a corner of the sunflower bag was torn open, and a little seed was gone. Given the size of the hole, I thought it was likely a visit from a squirrel or a raccoon early that morning. So I closed the corner and set a chunk of steel on the bag until I’d get back to unloading it.
About 4 o’clock pm, I noticed that the whole bag — and every single separate sunflower seed in the whole bed of the pickup was gone — like it wasn’t ever there. It got me thinking, “Wasn’t there a 40# bag of sunflowers there this morning? Did I carry it into the entry and forgot? ”
I stood there, my elder brain ticking away about nothing, when 'I spied with my little eye’ a dark mound of what, at first, looked like a mound of fresh-turned earth beyond the truck a few feet away. I might've said, “Oh crap! We've got pocket gophers invading the yard!"
Closer examination explained there wasn’t even a vague similarity between the two, but it did ring all the bells in the recesses of my noodle that this was not the teamwork of Squirrel & Coon, but a far larger animal capable of opening and closing a tailgate of a 1993 Silverado pickup. CHAIRMAN JOE, THE RASCAL! He's always leaving squirrels and raccoons here that he's live-trapped on his place!
You can well understand my suspicions now that CJ has evolved into Euell Theophilus Gibbons and Henry David Thoreau all in one —supreme hunter/gatherer-types with his li’l Walden-style shack in the woods https://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2025/04/cabinet-in-woods.html
I had to go to Wannaska about 2:00, for beer and stuff anyway, so I picked up a 40# bag of sunflowers to appease the little woman. Arriving home, of course I grab the most important items first, one of which I carry it to the house so it can retain its refrigerated coolness on the floor of our heated-floor basement (You gotta know where its heated and where its not) and leave the bag of sunflowers in the bed of the closed tailgate truck bed, thinking I’d put it in the house later. But I forgot.
Passing by the truck the next morning, about eleven o'clock, I walked out toward the corral where the trail camera is and noticed a corner of the sunflower bag was torn open, and a little seed was gone. Given the size of the hole, I thought it was likely a visit from a squirrel or a raccoon early that morning. So I closed the corner and set a chunk of steel on the bag until I’d get back to unloading it.
About 4 o’clock pm, I noticed that the whole bag — and every single separate sunflower seed in the whole bed of the pickup was gone — like it wasn’t ever there. It got me thinking, “Wasn’t there a 40# bag of sunflowers there this morning? Did I carry it into the entry and forgot? ”
I stood there, my elder brain ticking away about nothing, when 'I spied with my little eye’ a dark mound of what, at first, looked like a mound of fresh-turned earth beyond the truck a few feet away. I might've said, “Oh crap! We've got pocket gophers invading the yard!"
Closer examination explained there wasn’t even a vague similarity between the two, but it did ring all the bells in the recesses of my noodle that this was not the teamwork of Squirrel & Coon, but a far larger animal capable of opening and closing a tailgate of a 1993 Silverado pickup. CHAIRMAN JOE, THE RASCAL! He's always leaving squirrels and raccoons here that he's live-trapped on his place!
You can well understand my suspicions now that CJ has evolved into Euell Theophilus Gibbons and Henry David Thoreau all in one —supreme hunter/gatherer-types with his li’l Walden-style shack in the woods https://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2025/04/cabinet-in-woods.html
So, perturbed as I was, I mounted a search of the premises packin’ my t'irty-t'irty and found a good trail of sunflowers leavin’ the vicinity of the pickup in a circuitous manner: across the yard, up the ditch, across the road, down the ditch, through the tree rows, and gone to the deep woods in the direction of the schoolhouse.
It was then and there, I knew we had to call in
Puff and Hank
The Professionals.
A Hoo dunnit. Yay. I’d interview that bear you videoed a few weeks past.
ReplyDeleteAye, but which one? I think there are three, being a mother and two yearlings as they're leaving different sized tracks, and feces of varying volume from large dog to horse. Since Puff and Hank came on the scene, briefly, Memorial Day weekend, their presence alone (Okay, their barking at anything remotely thought suspicious by two city dogs) kept the bears from visiting our vicinity again. It must have been them and the relative absence of sunflower seeds and foodstuffs we manufactured ourselves. It was fun for awhile.
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