It Snarled

Opossums trotting through the layer of oak leaves that's all around the house make a rustling sound exactly like a person. Out on the porch I looked for a person and found an opossum passing through. It did not play dead at all, but faced me and hissed with a mouth full of sharp white teeth, not at all like a person. It wasn't ready for its close-up.

Hard Up, Are Ya?

When it got dark I heard heavy thuds and thunks on my roof. My hair stood on end. I locked the doors, hunkered down, and prepared to murder somebody.

In the morning I go outside and find a hummingbird feeder has been knocked off its hook. It's glass and fortunately hasn't broken. So I cook up new nectar, refill it and hang it.

After dark again, thud, thunk--sounding just like a man wearing heavy boots, walking on my roof. He will be sorry he did that, I vow. Just let him show his face.

Next morning one of my hummingbird feeders is missing. I look everywhere. It's bright red; it shouldn't be hard to find. But it's nowhere to be found! Those things are expensive! And the others are askew and empty! I filled them only yesterday!

In the early evening, while there's enough light to see, I'm on my porch and hear thunk, thunk, and to my surprise I see not five feet from my face the upside-down top half of a raccoon curled over my gutter, batting at and molesting one of the two remaining hummingbird feeders. So greedy it will try to steal 4:1 diluted sugar water? That's hard up! I grab the broom and chase it while saying bad words, and take the feeders into the house.

Next morning I walk to the mailbox in my pajamas and walking uphill I see a red object on my roof. It's my missing nectar feeder! Upright no less! Now to find a monitor who will watch me while I go up on a ladder and get it.

Hello, Southern Coal Skink

While I was cutting patches for the porch screens about noon, a rustling next to the pump house made me think, "It's the blacksnake." But the resident blacksnake is usually noiseless. More rustling. I went to look. Saw something unusual, cumin-colored, fat and glossy. I thought, "The glass lizard," but when I went outside with the camera and knelt by the ivy that covers fallen oak leaves, I saw its face and little alligator legs. What intelligent eyes. I said, "Hello."

When I moved too close it backed up beneath the ivy so that only its tail showed. I said, "I can still see you." The Amphibians and Reptiles of Missouri by Tom R. Johnson, the only handbook ever needed around here, ID'd it as Southern Coal Skink, plump body, stubby legs and all. Latin: Eumeces anthracinus pluvialis Cope. This is a female. The male has orange patches on its cheeks because it doesn't know how to blend foundation.

Stolen Goods Retrieved

Raccoons grab and steal the wire suet cage that I fill and hang outside for my birds -- that is, if I don't fetch it in at dusk every day. And they drag the cages up to 30 feet away, chop-shop 'em, and gobble the suet meant for my woodpeckers. Of course the little thieves don't return the empties. When the grass is tall, and the ticks, thorns and poison ivy are full blast there is no way I'm going to march through several hundred square feet of that to look for a dark-green suet cage. I buy a replacement for $1.

But today, just before everything goes green (we hope), I tromped through the brushy slope of rugged land just south of the cabin for the first time in a couple of years, looked hard, and retrieved three missing suet cages in various stages of decay. I plan on marking them with neon-orange tape so that when raccoons make off with them they won't take four years for me to find. Needless to say they were all very very suet-free.

Black and White

Black and white rule the country right now -- especially because sunshine here has been rare -- so the pink nose and elegant toes of this young lady caught my eye as she feasted on fallen birdseed and cracked corn. (Thought it would attract turkeys! Not yet!) Unusual to see an opossum in daylight. But free food, early in the evening, changes everything. Beautiful fur! She's a marsupial, and I wonder if she's looking for a boyfriend right now.