The squirrels are discomfited by the quail: they don’t tease it when it’s holding still like they do the Cooper’s hawk and they keep a cautious, mindful distance always. Whatever this weird thing is that showed up a few days ago, they’re not messing with it.
The quail was on the near end of the big wooden box that I put suet on top of for the ground birds that like it. He was singing at one point, for whatever reason, but he wasn’t admiring his reflection; there’s a screen door there. Maybe he just wanted to see in from higher up this time.
I suddenly saw a pair of black ears and the very top of a head leap into sight at the far end and before the whiskers could even surface, push back away just as fast and disappear back down. You could just hear loud squirrel swearing going on behind there–that thing is up THERE, too! Dang, that Feederfiller has her enforcer!
He knew I would squirt him if he jumped up there, but he knows how long it takes me to raise the squirt gun and open the door and he always grabs a bite before he runs. He can get away with exactly so much and he knows it and does–wow, I never got a reaction like that.
Ergo: the quail is scarier than I am. It’s bigger than they are, it’s outside, and it runs fast after them when they run from some random startling noise. And it can go up in the trees, to top it off.
The squirrel sulked and bullied and chased a mourning dove for a moment in retribution, and I thought wow–even a squirrel can get in a bad mood and take it out on some other being unlikely to get the better of them when they do. Who knew.
It reminded me of my kids having their moments towards each other on a bad day and as the mommy, working on getting them to be nice to each other. It is so joyful to see them all grown up now and looking out for each other the way they always really wanted to.
I bet my parents feel the same way. Well. This week, we’ll show them, huh!
Meantime, a box came today. A new cane; my favorite from Karen had been well loved for half a dozen years and was showing it. This one was quite inexpensive, enough so that if it didn’t work out I wasn’t going to cry. But wow–it was beautiful, artsy, and very lightweight. I really lucked out!
But when I tried it out there was just a tiny spot on the underside of the handle where the wood hit my hand wrong–it had a pimple, is the best description I can think of, and I knew it would get uncomfortable quickly if I had to grip it for long.
I wondered out loud where the sandpaper might be. It wouldn’t show if it had to lose its shine there. I showed the thing to Michelle.
My daughter is a genius. “Use a nail file!”
And that was all it took. Done!