Little Things

As I lay in bed last night, I was trying to think of what I could write here today. How do you follow something as thrilling as the sighting of eleven wolves? Those sorts of things don't happen on an everyday basis around here. But lots of little things do, and added together, they make for some intersting stories in themselves.

Mostly throughout the winter, we see chickadees, rose-breasted nuthatches, and finches on a daily basis. Occasionally, I get to see a white-breasted nuthatch, and I think of him as Speedo, because of the way he comes swooping in so quickly. He grabs a seed and then he's gone. His coloring seems streamlined, just like the way he flies in. Once in a while the pine grosbeaks show up, although I am more likely to see them at Sharlene's feeder near the rustic cabins. She gave us a great new bird feeder that is mesh, and holds lots of sunflower seeds. It has a trayon the bottom, and that has cut way back on the amount of seed that gets dropped to the ground. This makes the deer less likely to get a hold of the cast-offs. It also cuts down on what the squirrels get...that is, until they figure out how to raid the feeder itself.

Watching the squirrels learn how to get on the feeder is funny. They figure out all manners of tricks to try, from jumping from posts to hanging upside down. All kinds of feeders are on the market to foil these little furry guys. For the most part, I've learned to just tolerate them. They need to eat, too, after all. Since hanging this feeder, more squirrels have shown up, and so the territory fights have begun. Often I see them chasing each other, trying to defend their space. I saw a pair go up the tree right by the workshop. One jumped on to the roof of the shop, while the other went down the opposite side of the tree, out of sight until he was hightailing it on the ground. (Hey, I wonder if it is because of squirrels and the way they run that we have the phrase "hightail"?) When the rooftop guy saw the other getting away, he did a fantastic leap into the snow below to continue the chase. It looked so cool!

That reminded me of another time when I saw someone on that roof, poised to take a leap. It was Robert's friend Ben, on his BMX bicycle, ready to take a big jump to the ground. I was sitting with my back to him, and when someone near me said, "Barb mustn't know what is going on, " I caught on real fast. I happened to have the portable phone in my hand, and all I said to Ben was that I was going to call his dad, and I recited the number from memory. He apologized and came properly off the roof in about an instant! Now we have a metal roof there, so no more possible cool bike tricks.

Ice fishing season opened yesterday. I got a report from my neighbor Andy. He said that his party only caught one, out in front of his cabin. He heard that a group of fishermen down near Campers' Island caught five, so that sounds pretty good. The ice thickness that they found was generally around eight inches, which is what we have also measured. And the travel by snowmobile down to Campers' Island has been good. No open spots. That was good to hear. No one has reported slush, and we haven't heard of any bad mishaps. Hopefully everyone is exercising caution and going slowly.


It is snowing lightly, and it has been for most of the day. All of those little flakes add up!