My Back Yard

I’ve discovered a new squirrel blog, The Red Squirrel, featuring photos of squirrels that visit a feeder in Bavaria, Germany. Check it out!

Squirrelly cuteness definitely crosses national boundaries.

Squirrelogs should be for squirrels, right?

Iggy and I run a Squirrel Cafe, which is meant to feature a corn cob jammed onto a nail for squirrels’ eating pleasure. But dried corn cobs have been in short supply since the ethanol boom started. Iggy hasn’t found them at Agway in months. So, on his last visit to the store, Iggy bought a package of Squirrelogs made of sweet corn flour molded into a corn cob shape. My fluffy-tailed friends don’t like the Squirrelogs as much as the real thing. But they seem to enjoy gnawing on the logs occasionally.

The squirrels had the Squirrelogs all to themselves. Until yesterday, when I noticed some sparrows pecking at the rain-moistened corn product. They came back again today. Next, I noticed a blue jay working on the Squirrelog.

Birds had ignored the traditional corn cobs in the cafe, but now they’ve taken with gusto to the ersatz replacement. The poor squirrels are sharing yet another food source with the birds. In my backyard, there’s no food that’s exclusive to squirrels. The birds get in on all the action. Plus, they have three feeders that hang off a wall of our house where the squirrels can’t reach.

Here’s a guest post by Iggy, my husband.

I arrived home late one night last week from helping a friend with something. It was dark and I noticed as I entered the back of the yard the pungent smell of a skunk. We refer to skunks as “Skwinkee.” I carefully walked to the back door in the dark, very slowly, as didn’t want to surprise Skwinkee if they were around. As got closer, I could hear what sounded like one of our squirrels chewing on a peanut. But I know squirrels aren’t out that late. Still the motion detector light at back door had not triggered. I walked VERY slowly. Finally the light came on and I saw what at first I thought was one of the young racoons standing in the driveway. Then I realized it was a cute skunk which badly needed a haircut as its long hair made it look bigger. It did not move and kept chewing. I ascended the back stairs and the skunk stayed put. As I opened the door, the skunk ran off towards the street. Relieved I had made it, I grabbed a peanut from inside and threw it towards the driveway & closed the door.

Then I realized that was probably the last peanut the skunk would get from us as we can no longer put peanuts out at night for the squirrels & birds to race for the next morning. Although skunks are cute it is too risky to attract them.

The grackles enjoyed two suet squares and my new “water feature”–a bucket with a tiny hole so water drips into the birdbath below. Grackles’ shimmering blue head feathers are their only subtlety, so I’m much happier about the chickadees and woodpeckers that also visit the suet.

Five raccoons spread themselves over two of my neighbors’ trees around 7:30 p.m.–in broad daylight–on Friday night. Rachel Gooseberry, the mother, has four children of varying sizes. Three of the four seem to hang together. Earlier I saw three heads peering over the edge of the birdbath as they stood on the orange plastic chair Iggy put there years ago to ease the squirrels’ access to water. I worry about child number four, the runt.

Also this week:
* Black-eyed Susan’s bloomed in my yard for the first time. They’re transplants from a neighborhood lady’s garden last fall.
* Most of my Oriental lilies bloomed. They got through the season without any beetle infestations. Hurray!
* A couple of my numerous hostas are finally showing buds, long after the neighbors’.
* Some of my bean and cuke plants have flowered.

Away from the garden, Iggy and I biked 18 1/2 miles from Burlington to Bedford to Billerica and back. Turned around after reaching the historic Middlesex Canal.

Iggy didn’t want to get out of bed this morning.

His alarm kept ringing. He’d hit the snooze, then fall still again.

I got up and looked out into the back yard.

“Look, there’s Rachel Gooseberry and the babies!” I said. I’d spotted the little raccoons twining around their mother in the maple tree.

Allan was next to me in a flash. While he has seen Rachel, he has never seen her babies. The opportunity to see them for the first time was more powerful than any alarm clock.

Our next-door neighbors think Rachel’s name is Gooseberry.

I’m a fan of alliteration, so I named the raccoon living in our maple tree Rachel Raccoon.

After Iggy sent his photos of Rachel to Stuart, the neighbor, he learned that Stuart’s kids have dubbed her Gooseberry.

Apparently the neighbors didn’t care for their store-bought berries, so they spilled them out onto their back yard for Rachel to eat. She chomped on some, then spit them out. Hence, Gooseberry.

By the way, I saw Rachel’s kids for the first time on Saturday morning. Three striped faces jockeyed for position under Iggy’s car.

Iggy pulled onto the shoulder of the road. “Keep going,” he yelled at me. “I’m fixing my chain. I’ll catch up with you. You can go on to the ice cream stand, if you want.”

We were biking uphill and Iggy knows I don’t like losing my momentum. So I kept on going until the crest of the hill. I pulled over to wait. Iggy’s still mad at me for the time I left him behind on the Cape Cod Rail Trail, so I wasn’t going to do that again. Anyway, what if Great Brook Farm with its made-on-the-premises ice cream wasn’t as close as he thought or if I overshot the entrance?

The ground was uneven, so I held my bike upright, figuring Iggy would join me in minutes. And within minutes I heard a bike clattering, then stop.

I looked down the hill to see a flash of neon yellow Lycra–Iggy pulling over to tinker again. I laid my bike down and then plopped myself on a grassy spot to wait. This was going to take longer than I’d hoped. Ten minutes passed. His bike’s derailleur was shot. It was time to pass my bike to Iggy so he could ride back to the car since I couldn’t remember where it was and I’m not as fast as him.

I crossed the street so I could wait on broad shoulder where Iggy would have plenty of room to pull over safely upon his return. Plus, a waist-high stone wall offered a flat surface where I could wait in relative comfort.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” said Iggy, as he wheeled away. I hopped up on the wall and looked around. A white house sat at the end of wall with a flourish of orange day lilies nearby. Elsewhere, everything was green.

Except, what was that? Something fluttered on the bag fastened around my waist. A fiery orange and black butterfly.

It flew away, but lit on the lip of my insulated water bottle. Maybe it was thirsty. But it stayed there no longer than it had on my waist, moving quickly to the yellow-taped ends of Iggy’s handlebars close to my feet.

Its wings pulsed back and forth as if they moved with every breath. Then its wings closed tightly for several seconds. It looked as if it had disappeared, replaced by a dried out oak leaf on its edge. Then it opened and walked higher on the yellow tape. Then it twirled clockwise, reminding me of the whirling dervishes I’d seen in Turkey. It moved in tiny steps on legs the same thickness as its wiry antennae. I was fascinated.

Doing research later on the Massachusetts Audubon’s “Find a Butterfly” page, the creature most closely resembled an Eastern Comma.

Anyway, time passed much faster than I expected. Iggy also made better time on my bike, returning in just 45 minutes. He loaded the bike onto his car, and then I got my cone at Great Brook Farm after all.

A bunny grazed in broad daylight on dried corn that Iggy had scattered over our patio earlier in the day. Rabbits are supposed to be crepuscular. Most of our earlier bunny sightings have been after dusk.

The bunny was the size of two squirrels in one. Smaller than the bunny that had frozen in place when we’d driven home one evening. But a lot bigger than the baby bunny that started to dart in front of my car, but then thought better of it, earlier this week.

A squirrel chomped on the corn about two squirrel body-lengths away. It looks like bunnies and squirrels can coexist. I haven’t seen either species close to Rachel Raccoon.

A brown bird, just a little bit bigger than than the young sparrows sat on the fence outside my kitchen window. The long pointy beak identified it as a cowbird.

Cowbird eggs hatch in the nests of other birds, so it seemed natural the cowbird looked at home among the sparrows.

If a healthy raccoon is out during the day, it’s probably a nursing mother.

That comment by my next-door neighbor was partly responsible for my dubbing the resident of my backyard maple tree Rachel Raccoon. Rather than Robert Raccoon.

I assume she lives in that tree because a few years ago I saw three baby raccoons peering out of its high hollow. Also, another neighbor told me “there’s been a raccoon living in that tree since I was a little boy.”

Rachel lets me see her, but she doesn’t get close. In fact, she detours away from me or Iggy. That’s good. Otherwise I’d worry she might be rabid.