Critter Updates

Welcome, December! Let’s see if we can make this the festive, joyous month that Hollywoood would have us believe it is. I’m feeling good about the possibilities.

A couple of things have happened with local neighborhood critters. I find them odd and amusing.

First, the skunk.

I haven’t seen it, but several times this month I’ve definitely smelled it. It seems to be lurking in or around our yard, possibly in a pile of construction equipment and materials that our landlord (a general contractor) has left there. Earlier today, when the gardeners were cleaning up over there, they seemed to have disturbed it.

Or it could be in the garage. When I was putting up the first batch of Christmas lights last week I moved some boxes and both heard something moving under the workbench and got a strong whiff of skunk scent. It didn’t spray, but I knew it was there.

Or both.

For now, I’m leaving it alone at all costs and double checking when I go out at night to make sure that I’m not surprising it accidentally. Live and let live. And hope that it moves on to bother someone else.

Somewhat more bizarre for me is the rooster.

I never thought of it being “normal” for there to be “backyard chickens” in suburban Los Angeles, but it actually isn’t that unusual. They’re not permitted in apartments and there are some pretty lenient regulations on the number you can have and how big your yard has to be to have them, but the bar’s set really low. It’s surprising how many upper class and upper middle class neighborhoods have chickens as residents.

Most folks have only one rooster. I’m not sure if that’s a regulation or just that roosters tend to fight if there are more than one. I’m no “chicken dude” by any definition of the term.

Sometime over the summer, one of the houses below us in the canyon got a handful of chickens and the obligatory one rooster. I usually hear it in the morning if I go outside in the back.

But tonight, at 22:45, going outside to walk around and earn my blue “stand” dot on my watch’s exercise app (I’m apparently strongly motivated by stickers, dots, badges, gold stars, atta-boys, and so on) I can hear this idiot rooster going off about every minute. It’s coming up on midnight. It’s pitch dark. We’re eight hours away from morning twilight starts and over nine hours before actual sunrise.

Why is this idiot rooster crowing like his life depends on it?

It’s LA. I can only assume that the rooster is neurotic, like everyone and everything else here. It must be something in the air, or in the water. No doubt they’ll be getting some rooster therapy soon … if they haven’t already.

Oh, and the juncos have returned. We had the two that stayed here year around, but sometime in the last month about a dozen more showed up. Between them, the 18 to 24 mourning doves, and the house finches, morning feeding time gets crowded.

Where’s Merlin Parkins (and his large, macho man sidekick, Jim) when you need them?