The decoy
Tuesday October 25th 2016, 10:11 pm
Filed under: Garden,Wildlife

As the butternut vine grew it outgrew the birdnetted pop tent and so I had a series of them covering it along the way.

One had a single squash inside it apart from the others, and though the prickly acanthus stalks worked as a tent edging for some time, after it rained those turned soggy and the squirrels finally braved squeezing past them to get inside there. Chomp.

It was really too early to pick it then, and I knew if I removed it they’d go after the others. So this one became the sacrifice. But I made them entertain me for it–seeing a squirrel inside a cage while stealing the food I worked so hard for has a certain bemused karma aspect to it.

In the last two days they started in on the bulbous end and once they tasted that they went after it hard. Who knew squash guts were the best part? It looks halved and scooped now and the whole process fascinates me, seeing what they like and how fast they do what. Call it my science experiment.

The remaining three ripe butternuts were where the plant was basically over for the season and I picked them this morning. I left the mangled one uncovered now: Have at it, folks.

Meantime, this afternoon I filled the bird feeder, turning it upside first to shake out the last of the previous batch of safflower; you don’t pile seed onto that last bit again and again, for sanitation’s sake you always start over. It’s about to rain, the birds seemed to know it, let’s get a good meal out here for you guys, too.

McDonald’s for doves. No waiting for the finches up there to kick some down.

A minute or two later I looked up again to see them scatter, in flight each a strong gray rib along a suddenly-opened, invisible Chinese fan in the air, the finches below playing the part of the more colorful paper linking them together as the points at the bottom of each segment–and there was the Cooper’s hawk, doing that familiar tight U-turn mid-air, not before the window but in the center of the yard. It pulled its prey in tight at the far end of the curve, and so once again it knew where the other bird was going to be for him to reach behind it with his feet just so even at the moment he presumably couldn’t see it: he plotted his trajectory against the dove’s perfectly. Those big talons would tighten and that would be it.

The only proof it had actually even happened in that tiny blink was a small poof of feathers settling down right below that point.

Squash. Served.


2 Comments so far
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Alison, the enabler.

Comment by Sherry in Idaho 10.26.16 @ 6:08 am

We ended up with a decoy butternut this year as well. Ours was a decoy for deer and/or the neighbors goats. Now if I could just figure out a decoy melon.

Comment by Barbara S. 10.26.16 @ 7:49 am



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