Tim has been working away on his truck. He has been installing the $800 part and it has been raining like crazy so he has the truck partially pulled into the garage so that he can stay dry as he works.
Last night, he came in for supper (ham and spinach quiche, a new recipe, yummo). When he was done, he strapped a headlamp on and headed back down to the garage. He was nearly done and wanted to work a little more.
I was cleaning up supper, when the door opened just moments later and he walked back in. "I am done for a while."
Remember that skunk I saw a while back? He was at the catfood dish. In the dim, I thought we had a new cat. He spun around and waddled off.
Since then, we have noticed he has returned from time to time by his faint but distinctive scent. We haven't actually seen him. We pondered what to do about it. Since skunks are nocturnal, we feed the cats in the morning now and just give them a smaller meal at night.
I had just fed them that meal just before it got dark while our own supper was cooling. When Tim walked down, there was the skunk having himself a small smackeral with the cats. He looked completely at ease, and made no move to leave.
Tim stood there a bit surprised, taking the scene by the light of his headlamp. After a shocked moment, he decided that he should make the move to leave.
Moreover, when he opened the house door later, he said "There's a possum on the porch!"
I said, "Possum the cat?"
"No," he said. "Possum the possum."
And lo, the man whose great joy is watching the deer and turkeys out of the front window sounded very grumpy.
Critters are feeling very welcome at your new spread.
ReplyDeleteBipeds and quadripeds alike.
DeleteYou will have a whole crowd of critters coming for dinner at your house! ;)
ReplyDeleteIt seems so!
DeleteThe picture is me trying to get up, just imagine at almost 81 me doing that. I need to crawl to something solid and use that to get up. The critters will stay around, I am sure; you feed to well for them to leave.
ReplyDeleteI can still get up and down fairly easy. The new knee helped.
DeleteMaybe he will someday find a deer on the porch.
ReplyDeleteI was very surprised to see 3 deer drinking out of the bucket I watered the garden with...no more than 20 feet from the house.
DeleteThat quiche sounded tasty, I think you're inspiring me. And reading about your critters, haha. Sure does take me back to the '70s in our farmhouse. We got a skunk once in our basement, sent our cat downstairs to scare it off. Our scaredy-cat rain right back up those steps
ReplyDeleteHoo boy. A skunk in the house would be a major problem
DeleteI love watching the turkeys, little dinosaurs. Deer I can live without, not that anyone cares what I think. Possums eat ticks so they're not all bad. You do have a lot of nature there.
ReplyDeleteI don't object to possums. I just would like the skunk to keep a distance. The only animal I have a problem with are raccoons. The are aggressive and their clever little hands can wreak havoc.
DeleteSkunks have a special place in my heart. When I was a teenager I had a fixed and descented male who was the sweetest thing ever!!! Even fixed and descented he had a very slight odor, but you had to practically bury your nose in his fur--lol! Luckily he LOVED baths. :)
ReplyDeleteOh jees. I do not want a pet skunk...even a descented one! I hear that they a smart. I have an online acquaintance in Ohio who feeds the birds. Which drew squirrels. Then a skunk began to show up. The animal is so tame now it comes when she calls.
DeleteDebby's zoo!
ReplyDeleteYeah...😒
DeleteMaybe we will call it the funny farm.
DeleteI don't trust skunks. Our wild life rehabilitation picks up skunks and has never had a problem.
ReplyDeleteIt is just that trusting the wrong skunk is catastrophic.
DeleteBears, mountain lions, coyotes and skunks. And people are afraid of our spiders and wildlife.
ReplyDeleteNo mountain lions here. Bobcats are the biggest cat here...and they are not really all that big. Check out Allison's blog, though. The had a mountain lion in there back yard. Personally, that would have scared the mess out of me.
DeleteWell, we've got Coyotes, Javelinas, Mule Deer, and the occasional Mountain Lion in our back yard here in Tucson, but mercifully no Skunks. Clearly a critter rich environment in both places.
ReplyDeleteGotta say, Jim, given a choice between a mountain lion and a skunk, I will take a skunk everytime. Skunks are shockingly easy to trap and relocate. We may wind up doing that. We are keeping an eye on the situation.
DeleteOh, I LOVE that photo. We have a skunk and we don't even feed him. He likes to walk back and forth across my front porch at night. We can see him on our security camera. We are VERY careful if we have to open the door at night.
ReplyDeleteWe are trying hard NOT to feed the skunk. He invited himself to dinner. We are trying to make sure there is not food left overnight.
DeleteToo much nature, as Ms. Moon often says. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how I'd feel having a skunk around. On the one hand, they are in decline, so having one is a good sign of a healthy ecosystem. But yeah, then there's the stink thing. Maybe feeding the cats in the morning will discourage it from coming around.
It has not seemed to deter him. Fingers crossed.
DeleteYour wild life makes our wild life look so tame.
ReplyDeleteOur wildlife is getting (in some cases) disconcertingly tame.
DeleteWe used to house (huts we made from Rubbermaid containers with warming pads) and feed stray cats, which also attracted all manner of wild life. We had possums, raccoons, and the occasional skunk. We quit doing that for our sanity, as some of them considered this their home and moved in. (i.e. digging under our deck and having babies) No good deed goes unpunished. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteYup. We are learning this very thing.
DeleteA veritable zoo, sounds lovely.
ReplyDeleteWith the potential to get unlovely really quickly.
DeleteSo the skunk was eating WITH the cats? That sounds quite unusual but I really know nothing about cat-skunk relations.
ReplyDeleteThis one does, which is interesting. Initially it did not appear that it would work like that, but they tolerate each other very politely. I am not sure how this will work out. Yesterday, Tim walked down to check a part number. He smacked a flat hand against the side of the truck and urged them to 'git'. Not one of the paid him the slightest mind. We are probably going to end up setting a live trap and getting him out of there.
ReplyDelete