Other People's Stuff

I'm snooping in other people's barns on an early November six-mile run near my home. Around here, very few barns actually house animals any more. Some of them still shelter hay, but most of them are just big airy storage units for stuff that nobody wants any more. 

Which makes them crack for me, who used to haunt flea markets and tag sales back in the days when I still thought I needed stuff. Now, I drive by yard sales with a steely resolve not to be dragged in.

I'm already thinking about how much crap I have, and what I'm going to do with it all when I can't deal with it any more. A person with a lot of interests (art, music, natural history, books, science, horticulture, aquariums, batkeeping, specimen prep to name just a few) accumulates a LOT of crap in half a lifetime.

So I love to look at other people's stuff. Everything in this post is in the near barn with the silver roof, and the half a satellite deesh poking out of the carriage space. See photo above.

 Mmm. Beautiful blue Mason jar, nice limited palette composition.

A box of rags, and a robin's nest that must've fallen from a beam above. 

More jars and some gas pipeline, and some great Wyethian milkhouse light at the end of the corn crib.

A very large hole, with bedding. Could be woodchuck, probably is. But could be the work of a rat, too. Rats live pretty large for their size. 

I couldn't find any telltale hairs.

Mousestuff. Oh, don't worry. I will definitely remove the lids before microwaving.

Mice love jars. So do Carolina wrens! Oh my, what a place for a nest. Couldn't tell if the fledglings made it or not. Carolina wrens are such neat housekeepers there's rarely ever a telltale poop left behind.

This was a cool find: a whole box full of tape dispensers? Huh?

The white-footed mice have been opening hickory nuts here.

 Hickory dickory dock. The mouse ran up the tape dispenser.

The tape theme would continue upstairs. I was drawn by curiosity up the Stairway of Poop.

If you know raccoons, you know they love to poop on things. Preferably stairs, where your foot is about to go.

And at the top of stairs. Eating persimmons, I see. Me, too. Only I remove the seeds at the upper end of my alimentary tract, thank you.

At the top of the stairs, a sort of living room, one Vermeer would have liked to paint, if he liked junky interiors. An elegant wing chair, full of some kind of video games. Shazzam! I'd been hoping they were eight-track tapes. That would have been amusing, to go through the titles. But video games mean nothing to me. It's like looking at runes.

Absolutely love the lighting here. Yum.

Yes, I find these scenes compellingly creepy. Especially when I get the feeling people have been, um, doing stuff up here, amidst the animal droppings.

 A little privacy, please. Why would you need a curtain in the upstairs of a barn...? To try on clothes? Oh, never mind. Ishta. Uffda.

The mind does go places. Sometimes comes a bit unhinged.

The runes never speak.

Outside, the beeches whisper of Lothlorien, of a cleaner, more wholesome place, a place where I belong. And on I trot.

Raccoons and Bird Feeders

It's raccoon season, that special time of year when any sunflower seed we put out goes mostly into the gullets of huge fat fearless procyonids. It's only gonna get worse from here on out, as the lactating females come in.

These photos were taken the day I took the cylinder feeder and globe feeder down, for obvious reasons. We knew this nice copper baffle would never stop a raccoon, but we bought it anyway, thinking it might slow down any squirrel that tried something.

Yes, I'm talking to you. What do you think you're doing out there in the bold daylight, hanging on like that and emptying my feeder?

He took a few more gullet fulls before mumbling something about being ready to leave anyway. I had to admire his flexibility and strength. It can't be easy to hold that bulk up with one's hind legs while maneuvering one's front half onto the feeder.

Yep, just leaving, left something burning on the stove, sorry to gobble and run...

Mether. Why do you always wait until the racketycoon is in the woods before you let me out? I could have beat him up for you. I'm up on my rabies shots.

Thank you, Chet Baker, but I prefer my dogs unshredded.

Note turd-tail antenna, straight out. Be- be- be- be- beep beep! Racketycoon!

I cope with 'coon season by putting out only as much food as the birds will eat in a day, just a half scoop on the screen-bottomed platform feeder. The peanut feeder is pretty much coon proof (so far this year), and it's double-wired onto the hook, so they don't get much joy from it. I don't want to be putting out pounds and pounds of seed in summer, anyway, so it's probably just as well we have these furry marauders to keep us honest and the birds healthier. And needless to say, Zick dough is but a distant memory.

Zick on NPR

Tonight, on National Public Radio's afternoon news show, All Things Considered, I'll be yakkin' about the Charlie Brownish peach tree in our backyard and how, despite some very bad ideas and some very dedicated raccoons, we managed to get some fruit off it. 

All Things Considered airs at 4 pm Eastern time, and the commentary could air at any time from 4-6 pm. Then again, some important stuff could happen, and it might  not air at all. But for now, it's on the board. Give it a listen! For those who miss it, here's a link to the archived soundfile at npr.org.

That's five feet of jerry-rigged 'coon baffle there, people.