Thieves & Thorns Update

As usual, I made suet this weekend. I put it out on the porch (in the cold) to harden. I set it right outside my kitchen window. While I was washing dishes, I saw a Titmouse flying onto the porch, which alerted me to what was going on ... a number of my feathered friends couldn't quite wait for it to get done and came in to help themselves. Here is one cardinal that helped himself to some lunch.

I took what the little beggers didn't eat out of the pan today and put it into the baking sheet that I use for the freezer. I left it on the porch railing (so I wouldn't forget to take it out to the shed freezer) ... much to the delight of my feathered friends, especially the cardinals. Pat and I enjoyed the show today as we sat at the dining room table eating our lunch.

I put the suet up this afternoon, before I left to run my weekly errands ... much to their dismay. They really congregated in the tree looking for the pan. If you look real close in the picture below (you might have to click on the picture to enlarge it), there are eight cardinals hanging around looking for the suet.

As for my suet feeders in the tree, one has again gone missing. I went out on Saturday morning to find it gone. It was freezing (literally) this weekend, so now I'm waiting for a little warmer weather to go hunting for it. This time they stole the one that usually hangs over the birdfeeder.

However, the mystery surrounding the thief (or, in this instance, thieves) has been solved.

I rarely walk by the sliding glass doors without looking outside ... night or day. As I walked by on Sunday night, I noticed that the birdfeeder was really swinging ... and I knew there wasn't that much of breeze. I headed for the back room to get Pat's big Black & Decker Spotlight (this thing is heavy and lights up the yard like it's daylight). I crept up to the sliding glass doors and positioned myself and turned the thing on. Not just one, but two raccoons turned to see where the light was coming from.

One raccoon was twice the size of the other. I'm not sure if it was a male with its mate or maybe a mother with an offspring from last year. He/she was so big that I'm going to refer to it as a male for the "rest of the story" as Paul Harvey would say (God rest his soul).

The light startled them enough that they headed out ... by way of the hill behind the house! I went to the computer room to inform Pat that I now knew the identity of the suet thieves ... raccoons. A little later, I noticed the birdfeeder swinging again, so I once again got the spotlight. It seems that they were hungry enough to decide to ignore the blinding light hitting them in the face.

I watched those two little bandits for quite a while and they gave me more than one or two chuckles. The big one is the climber. He climbed up the tree and got right above the suet feeder that I have hanging on a chain. Hanging down from the limb with his hind feet, he pulled the chain like he was pulling a rope on a bucket up from a well, he pulled the feeder up link by link until he was able to get to the suet feeder. After he was done, he left me a right nice tangle of chain in the branches of the tree.

A little later he climbed down enough and reached over to grab the side of the bird feeder. Hanging onto the trunk of the tree with his back feet, he held the bird feeder with one paw and would reach out with the other to grab a pawful to eat. While he was at it, he dropped a bit down to his accomplice below.

I guess he decided that was a bit too uncomfortable a position, because he climbed up the tree and across the branch that the feeder was hanging on. He then climbed down the hook and rope (head first) until he got to the roof of the bird feeder. He then spread out his belly over the roof (that coon was so big he covered the whole thing) and would reach down to grab a seed to eat at his leisure.

I tried to get pictures, but wasn't quite able to maneuver the camera and spotlight ... not to mention get the settings to work in that kind of light. However, he may be related to this guy who came to eat the corn that we put out in the back clearing for the deer. The picture below was taken last year with Pat's Deer Cam. Oh well, I'm sure they will be back and this time I'll get Pat to help me try to get a picture of the bandits.

And finally, the thorn (Hughes) in my side. I'm not really surprised that we didn't get the modem today. Luckily we've babied the old one along and it's lasted the weekend. I was supposed to call them tonight, but I got busy doing a number of other chores and forgot to call until just a bit ago and I'm just too tired to fight with them tonight.