Laura on Life

Wildlife

By Laura Snyder

[May 05, 2008]  Watching the wildlife in my backyard has always amused me. No, I'm not talking about my children this time. When my children are not in it, my backyard teems with all kinds of animals. All of them seem to have only two things on their minds: food and procreation. Ah, nature!

The birds are beautiful creatures. They come to my backyard in all different colors and sizes, united with the express desire to empty my bird feeder. They also have two common enemies: those wily squirrels, whose first and last thoughts are how to get at that birdseed, and my cat, whose intentions are a bit more ambitious than the squirrels'.

I went into a specialty store the other day where they had set up a demonstration of a bird feeder that was "squirrel-proof." The perch where the birds were supposed to light was spring-loaded. When something heavier than a bird sits on it, the perch spins around like the inside of a blender on Cinco de Mayo. The unlucky squirrel who attempts to steal the birdseed would first learn the definition of the word "G-force" as he hangs on for dear life, and then he would go sailing through the air, fervently wishing that he, too, had wings. Then, like a teenager who lost his lunch after riding the roller coaster, he'd be back up there, again.

We once had a family of raccoons who figured out how to lift the lid off our trash cans. They'd eat until they were full, and then they'd put the lid back on and leave! I wanted to interview their mother to find out how she got them to put something back where they found it. Parents everywhere would trade their minivan for that information!

There are a couple of ducks that I watch now and then. Just before they um ... contribute to the continuation of their species, they have a courting ritual of bobbing their heads up and down. You can imagine them thinking: "Do ya wanna,"; "Yeah"; ... "Do ya wanna"; "Yeah"; ..."Do ya wanna"; "Yeah" ... and then he makes his move. He nearly drowns that female while he does his thing, then sits high in the water and flaps his wings like he's crowing. The female just ducks under the water and shakes herself clean. It's embarrassing! Have they no shame?

We had an opossum that would wander over every night and eat our cat's food. Our cat, amazingly, would just sit there and watch it eat her food. Well, I sat that cat down for a long talk. I told her, "If you don't want to watch the bird feeder all day waiting for a meal to fly into your mouth, then you'll have to start defending your food bowl." She told me in her meowy way that she didn't like the food in her bowl. I said, "What? It's good enough for the opossum, but it's not good enough for you?"

[By LAURA SNYDER]

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