Outdoorsness

Did yardwork yesterday. We raked up the leaves in the front and transported them to a pile in the backyard. It was a much larger pile than you'd expect from a single tree.

Kase-cat was following us. I dropped her in the leaves we were carting first. She sank down up to her neck, and waded out. I found it very funny. Afterward I dropped her into the pile. She sank out of sight immediately, then sort of swam out. It was hilarious.

I don't think she minded that much, because I picked her up three more times and dropped her in, and she never made any effort to avoid me. I was greatly amused. My father didn't see what was so funny.

We also put up the feeders, because it's getting colder and so the cats won't be out so much. One is a new suet cage feeder. We hooked it over a thin broken branch in the backyard. I've never tried one before, so I'll see how it goes. The other one was an older one, pretty simple. It has slots for birds to perch at the seeds, and a rim to prevent the seeds from falling out. That went up in the front yard.



This morning (okay, twelvish...I sleep late, okay?) I saw that the front feeder was discovered. There was a small flock of birds, and more importantly, a squirrel.

The squirrel would hang by his back legs and stretch out to reach the feeder rim. He'd get a seed (there were sunflower seeds and almonds), then hang upsidedown with it held in his little paws and eat it. It was so cute. The little birds kept trying to land on the other side of the rim, but they'd get disturbed by how the squirrel was pushing it around and fly off again.

I killed a good hour watching this.

(For some reason, the only response my family had to this was 'damn squirrel')

Two more squirrels arrived, and the first (who was really big) chased them back. Although I feel bad about it, I found it really cute. I'm going to put up another feeder for them.

I saw a bird's beak in the garden (it was orange. The rest of the bird was the exact shade of brown as the garden). Later, when she came out with her mate, a bright pretty red cardinal, and they ate seeds underneath the feeder, I got a better look.

When I went outside, the big squirrel froze in place, which was especially odd-looking because he was in mid-step at the time. He held still for about thirty seconds, and then I decided to walk toward him. He ran back about a body length and wouldn't go further. I got within a foot of him.

The ground underneath the feeder was covered in sunflower seed shells. I'm impressed by how many were shelled. The squirrel wound up working his way through a good quarter of the feeder by the end of the day. I wonder how long it'll take him before he figures out how to knock the feeder off the tree.

I want to make pinecone feeders and tie them on the branches with long strings, then wait for the squirrels to learn to chew through the string.