Trail of tears

Walking up the stairs to Ken's deck last night, Tess on a leash (so she wouldn't take off), Chances running to her favorite spot under the bird feeder (to eat sunflower seed husks) I noticed a trail, perfectly lined up, of 7 red squirrel corpses and 1 dead blue jay. Good old Ken. He and I hate red squirrels and red squirrels love sunflower seed, so they frequent our bird feeders. They take up space and hog the food, and if they get in your attic, house, etc. they do a lot of damage. He's been battling them for years. One year he shot them, one by one. He and the neighbor shot a total of 30 squirrels over the winter. Then he decided the best thing to do was to trap them so someone gave him a small metal trap (SNAP! You're dead, unless just your leg gets stuck, then never mind what comes next). He sets the trap in the middle of his feeder. Sometimes catches a blue jay by the toes or feathers--from which they easily survive. Once caught a blue jay in the thorax, oops, dead. When he has a corpse he tosses it out on the snow, figuring the crows will take it away. Not so much this year. Each corpse gets buried with a fresh snowfall, but never have they all been exposed when the snow melts. Pardon my callous and gruesome sense of humor, but the sight of these squirrel corpses lined up, nose to tail in a little row, made me laugh out loud. You have to realize that Ken does things as if it were 1920 and he were living the life of subsistence farming. I'm just lucky he doesn't like the taste of squirrel.

It's been raining here but the low tonight is supposed to be 9. See? March is a cruel month. We're due a Nor'easter, which will last a couple of days at least, and is expected to dump some snow on us. I'm amused by the forecast for wind chill of -1. Why bother measuring wind chill if that's the best you can come up with?

I still have Hugo the Westie. His hearing seems to have miraculously returned, selectively. Little punk of a dog. He still tries to terrorize my dogs but they are wise to him now and ignore his snarls, especially since he's usually wagging his tail while he snarls. His morning routine is extensive and involves massages, scratching his head, rubbing his face on the bed and lots of grunting. All this before he will get off the bed. My dogs are up like a shot as soon as my breathing changes or I shift position. They can hear me turn off the alarm before it goes off. Difference is what makes life interesting, no?

Lunch with my friend Barb today. All of our favorite restaurants have closed so we're trying a new one. My life is so routine that this is an exciting prospect for me. I've already had a lot of social interaction this morning--when I got my coffee this morning the Late Crowd was hanging out at the store. There was Chipper Anderson (who runs the power plant at Union Falls and is decidedly not the brightest star in the sky) and Rick Parrotte, my plow man (who IS one of the brightest stars in the sky and has a beautiful beagle named Boomer). Nice chat with each of them. Shift gears and topics for each. Feel connected to the neighborhood and the universe. Nice to be recognized. Funny how much men respect me because I live alone where I do. Not a big deal to me, we all have to live somewhere.

On to Bartok, Beethoven, Mozart and lots of composers I've never heard of. Then about 75 board books. I'm so versatile, aren't I?