It just stopped raining and I heard a fox screech. Not the barking, which is cool, but the creepy sounding thing they do. If I didn't know what it was I'd be in the basement hiding under blankets with some dragonglass.
I've got these friggin' mockingbirds that go 24/7. It's OK for about 16 hours a day, but after midnight you just say anti-mockingbird prayers and hope they OD on meth or whatever it is that they are doing.
Magnificent songbirds doing their mating calls,the occasional flyover goose that just went by a few minutes ago,Pops squirrels being squirrelly in the few remaining leaf piles.All is good.Sounds of nature.Yum.
Old men and squirrels...pretty funny. Wild squirrel and rabbit was on the menu for most of the rural folks when I was a kid. I used to visit my grandparents and old George usually had a few cleaned and drying and hanging up on the back porch.My childhood friend Larry's pop too. He was a tough and wiry old cuss, and had a pet skunk hanging around the house. He also survived the D-Day invasion at Normandy and subsequent emotional wounds of war, although alcoholism plagued him for much of his life. He had a crazy laugh and would tell us boys all kinds of stories about motorcycles and tough old guys he used to know. He never talked about the war though. Never. Neither did any my uncles. I sort of picked up the gist just reading between the lines of their lives after.
Anyhow old Doc; Larry's dad...He was an avid squirrel eater too, but toward the end of his life he had so many backyard friends he would name them and invent all these crazy obstacles to keep them out of the bird feeders and was obsessed with it to hear Larry tell it.
So Doc died back in the early 80's, worried about who would care for them. Larry was my age, and he died from lung cancer in about '05. He was a paint and body man most of his adult life. Also he smoked cigs from the time he was 12. A lot of the boys there where we grew up did. He always said when it was his time to go he was going to go whether he smoked or not. He was right. I sure miss him. Lots of tales could be told there.
Anyhow, squirrels and the old men who love to care about them...
Magnificent songbirds doing their mating calls, the occasional flyover goose that just went by a few minutes ago, Pops squirrels being squirrelly in the few remaining leaf piles. All is good. Sounds of nature. Yum.
That is actually a popular misconception; Roosters do not have a set time that they crow; they can crow incessantly for days straight like that guy and then be silent for an entire week! Then they will crow only in the morning for awhile or just randomly out of the blue will go off for a couple of hours and then silent, sometimes they crow intermittently throughout the day. After 15 years or so, I have not been able to define any pattern at all. Just be thankful you are not around a goat, they know how to annoy and are quite adept at it!
I have no foul myself but there is a coop a few hundred yards away. I have become well acquainted with their habits over the years. This one was truly world class though. I had actually remarked to my neighbor's twenty-something kid as he was staggering home sometime around 2:00 am one morning and the crazy bird was still at it that I didn't think that one was going to make it past Easter. It was to the day.
