Category Archives: Critters

Sun’s up, it’s a bit chilly (mid 50’s) but they’re up on top of the wall, asleep, sunning themselves. Presumably with a belly full of free bird seed, which seems to come from a magic, eternally refilling source, so no one’s missing any meals. Chubby, well fed, warm, comfy!

Later, after it warmed up, the three of them were splooting out on the cool cement in the shade on the porch. I’m sure it felt good on their bellies.

While I was spending all day in Zoom meetings, answering emails, generating and distributing reports, meeting deadlines, and coding and entering data so I can get my month-end close done and reports sent out.

Who’s the winner between these two scenarios? Who’s got it better? How do I get to be the squirrel for a while?

Insert standard semi-annual rant about how freakin’ stupid Daylight Savings Time is and how much I despise it.

Critters.

We of course have these squirrels (three, it seems) and tons of birds (finches, sparrows, scrub jays, hummingbirds, crows, owls, hawks). I’ve seen fence lizards three or four times in seven-plus months so I know they’re here, but we don’t have nearly as many as we had back in West Hills, which I find very surprising.

Rumored to be around (the neighbors have told us they’ve seen them, or I’ve heard them, or some local agency has pictures of them) but not yet seen are rabbits, coyotes (I hear them sounding off every few days), and bald eagles. The bald eagles would be spectacular to see! The Big Bear nest is only twenty-two miles away, up a couple thousand feet of elevation, so it’s not unreasonable to think there are more around.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are the odd deer, elk, bobcat, or even a bear or two out there, but probably much more likely to see them up in the mountains or at least NEXT TO the mountains. We’re three or four miles away, out on the valley floor, so the odds are against us.

I am surprised we don’t see more feral or neighborhood cats. We’ve seen the security cameras on the back porch turn on in the middle of the night a few times due to cats wandering around, but I would have bet on it happening more often than it does.

And bats! We should see more bats, particularly around sunset. I’ve seen them maybe twice – should be more.

I’ll keep my eyes open.

At first there was one, then two pretty regularly. For a couple of days there were definitely three.

They are usually on the wall, in the sun, first thing in the morning.

I’ve expressed some skepticism in the past about the safety of these locations given the presence of hawks and owls in the area.

But, there they were, pretty much every day. Often one, sometimes two on the wall at once with the third down on the ground eating leftover bird seed.

Sometimes I would see them in full “sploot” mode, spread eagled on top of the wall, soaking up photons.

Sometimes one of them would be off on the end of the wall, looking for activity in the neighbor’s yard.

But they were skittish. If they saw me at all in the window, taking pictures, they were down the trellis in a flash.

Down to the ground, then into their hidey hole under the pergola.

Proof that there were at least two – the third one was out but they never got close enough together for me to get all of them.

There must have been something different about the lighting on this occasion, with some overcast and the Sun higher, later in the day. They were in the planter just outside of the kitchen window, but didn’t spook at all when I came up to the glass to shoot pictures, seemed to not see me even through they were much closer than when they’re on the wall.

And then all of them have vanished. I have no clue what or why, but it’s been about ten days since I’ve seen any of them. Not three, or two, or one squirrel. For the last week and change, ZERO squirrels.

Hawk? They moved, temporarily or otherwise, to another yard or spot out in the empty lots surrounding us? They’re hibernating? (Do they do that?)

Circle of life? Who knows.

If/when they show back up, the camera is ready. The birdseed is everywhere. The pergola awaits.

We like having neighbors and all, we want to be friendly, but I would really, REALLY prefer to not have our new neighbors be of the tunneling, rodent-like variety.

I noticed this tunnel under the side of the pergola decking a couple weeks ago and I’ve filled the rocks back in twice, only to have the hole open up again in a day or so. Behind the back yard shed there’s a stack of leftover bricks and paving stones – I guess they’re the next weapon in the fight. Let’s see if the little bugger is strong enough to move them.

I haven’t actually spotted the critter in question. It could be a number of species, but my money’s on it being Two-Tone, our resident squirrel. I don’t mind having it around, and I don’t mind it stealing a share of the bird seed hanging above this spot, but I really don’t want a secret lair under the porch. Secret lairs tend to attract evil, sort of by definition, and we seem to have more than enough of that around these days without inviting any more.

And yes, for those keeping track (which is likely only ME), there was no post yesterday. The 17th day in over eleven years when I didn’t have a post.

I blame gremlins. There was a heavy-duty attack which started on Wednesday afternoon and clobbered my ability to hit some key work deadlines for which I had been busting my ass for a week or more. (An information provider and database that we use at work was offline for 24+ hours, which meant I couldn’t get the data I needed to finish the reports due Thursday and Friday.) That sucked big time, caused a ton of stress, and then when the site came back up it started spitting out reports that were a bit garbage-like, which didn’t help. By the time I got my data and started to play catch up, my focus didn’t include yesterday’s posts. Usually I at least realize about 23:55 that time is fleeting and I can at least drop a “Proof Of Life” post, but this time it was closer to 02:30 before I came up for air.

Gremlins 1, Paul 0. But that’s just a battle, not the war. Carrying on…