Animals | wordsfromanneli

July 28, 2022
by wordsfromanneli 30 Comments

The Plum Tree Nest

Two things are special about this nest.

One – I didn’t know it was there and it isn’t a robin’s nest. Something smaller, but I don’t know what.

Two – Because of finding this nest I now know that there are a few (VERY few) plums on this tree. The plum trees have been a bust this year. We have two Italian prune plum trees and two of these round yellow-green cherry plum trees (I don’t know what they’re called). See the plums? One is by the nest and the other is at the bottom left of the picture.

The nest might have been from some smallish bird like a chipping sparrow, but it was not a spotted towhee (they nest on the ground) or a bigger bird like a robin that would need a bigger nest (robins and towhees being the two most common birds around here).

But if it hadn’t been for the nest, I wouldn’t have noticed that there are a few plums on the tree – the only plums this year! No prune plums and only a handful of these green ones.

The baby birds are long gone, and I can only hope that they made it. I love having birds around.

Baby birds have left their home,

And set out, the world to roam,

They have left the nest behind,

Now it’s there for me to find.

Next to it, some plums have grown,

Though I hadn’t even known,

Good to see at least a few,

That have blossomed, and then grew.

July 23, 2022
by wordsfromanneli 36 Comments

Stop Picking on Me!

“Hey! Squirrel! What’re you lookin’ at?”

“Wow! Does it hurt? You know … where the feathers are missing on top of your head.”

“Nah … Gets a little cool and wet when it’s rainy, and I got a sunburn the other day, but otherwise, it just lets air get to my head.”

“So does that mean you’re an airhead?”

“Course not! And stop picking on me.”

“Looks like someone else was picking on you. What happened?”

“I don’t know for sure, but some big bird dive bombed me when I was so focused on getting the bugs out of a tree and I forgot to look up every few seconds. See the holes where he tried to grab me?”

“Yeah! That’s amazing. What are you going to do about it? About the hair loss, I mean. I’ve heard Rogaine is supposed to work.”

“It’ll grow back soon enough on its own. I figure if I stay up higher than anyone else and keep my head up, no one can see the damage to my helmet. That way I can keep the incident under my hat.”

“Good luck with that. I can see the bald spot from here.

And you know I’m a chatterbox … but I’ll try to be nice. No promises though.”

July 19, 2022
by wordsfromanneli 47 Comments

Flicker Baby

Mom told me to wait for her up here. I don’t like being alone.

Oh, my! I hope she hurries. I don’t like the look of that crow.

Mother Flicker dips and glides,

While her baby sits and hides,

Harvesting some lovely ants,

Adds a beetle to enhance,

All the goodness that she feeds,

To her babe and fills his needs.

Junior waits while mother works,

Hoping that no danger lurks,

Crows and merlins and the like,

Waiting for a chance to strike,

Junior always eyes the skies,

Watching everything that flies.

“Come on, Mama!” Junior cries,

“Bring those insects, bugs, and flies,

I’m so hungry all the time,

Don’t you hear the lunch bell chime?”

Nervous baby can relax,

Mom is back and she brought snacks.

July 14, 2022
by wordsfromanneli 43 Comments

Guarding Lunch

Usually, animals guard their food from the competition, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen one sitting on it.

Sometimes finding food is hard,

Instinct tells you to stand guard,

But when there’s no room to stand,

Sit down, let your big butt land.

No one else can get your food,

You don’t care if it seems rude,

Once you only stood and hovered,

Now you’ve really got it covered.

July 3, 2022
by wordsfromanneli 28 Comments

Summer Sips

Blinds are drawn, they can’t see me,

I approach, no need to flee,

Lovely flowers, red and sweet,

Promise me a juicy treat.

Though the blooms may look the same,

Some are potent, some are lame,

Tasty sips like summer wine,

All this nectar’s mine all mine.

June 24, 2022
by wordsfromanneli 39 Comments

Squirrel Talk

Lately, the squirrels have been noisier when they get fed. I don’t know what they’re saying to each other, but it seems as if they can’t stop talking. Didn’t their mother teach them not to talk with their mouth full? Be sure to have the sound on so you can hear their conversation.

It’s a funny spring this year,

Filberts, there are none, I hear.

Even fir cones haven’t grown,

Unlike other years I’ve known.

I’m so thankful for these seeds,

They will sure fulfill our needs,

You eat yours and I’ll eat mine,

Then we’ll get along just fine.

June 17, 2022
by wordsfromanneli 31 Comments

Randolph Raccoon Roots Around

The Captain and I were having an afternoon coffee on our deck when Randolph came to visit. He’d been lurking around the yard late at night and usually disappeared in the wee hours of the morning. But lately he is getting braver about being seen in the glaring daylight hours.

He wasn’t too concerned about anything – even took time to scratch an itch.

He came right out in the open, looking for dandelions in the grass, and this explains his more frequent visits. Our grass is loaded in weeds. Definitely not a Scott’s Turfbuilder lawn. I don’t really mind him digging out the weeds to get at the roots or bugs, but I wish he would refill the holes.

Until now I had been blaming Bonnie and Benny Bunny for all the holes dug in our “lawn,” and they do their fair share of digging, but I saw Randolph in action this day, and knew I had to allow the bunnies some leniency. They are probably only guilty of digging a third of the holes in the yard.

June 11, 2022
by wordsfromanneli 29 Comments

Oyster Mushrooms

We had a nice surprise today. A friend had been out in the woods picking oyster mushrooms and had a bunch to give us.

I’ve picked chanterelles but I didn’t know much about oyster mushrooms so I’ve never picked them. With mushrooms, you can’t take chances because many kinds of mushrooms have lookalikes and many of those can make you very sick (or worse).

So here is a picture the friend took to show us how they grow. See them there on the trunk of that dead alder tree?

The pictures were all taken by my friend with his phone, except for the two photos in my kitchen.

If you thought mushrooms always grow on the ground, think again. Here they are again, going way up the tree.

They almost look round like a tennis ball, but if you look carefully, you’ll see that they are flat and often seem to grow overlapping each other.

Because they are off the ground, they are much easier to clean than chanterelles.

I just took a pastry brush and cleaned off a few specks of dirt. No need to wash them and make them soggy. My dryer has five layers so I filled those up with the flat mushrooms and gave my attention to the rest of them which, temporarily, are spread out on a couple of baking sheets. (They are not going to be baked.)

I put a tiny bit of butter in a pan and put the mushroom pieces in it. This is just the start of what I put in the pan. I filled the pan enough so the whole bottom of the pan is filled. One thing I learned is that it is much easier to tear oyster mushrooms than to cut them.

Once they were sauteed just until they were cooked through, I put them in a big bowl to cool off while I cooked the next batch. After the sauteed mushrooms were all cool, I put them into plastic tubs and froze them. The sauteeing ensures that the mushrooms are not rubbery when you thaw them out to add to stir fries or gravy or whatever dish you want them to be in.

A couple of the bigger pieces were perfect for adding to a sandwich. So good!

If you find the energy to go out into the woods to look for mushrooms, you might be rewarded with the sighting of a large animal – at least the sight of its hind end. I’ll spare you the guesswork – it’s an elk.

Paved road, wildlife viewing, and a load of mushrooms for dinner. What could be better?

June 7, 2022
by wordsfromanneli 29 Comments

Innocence Backfires

When Emma, our English field cocker spaniel, first went pheasant hunting, she just did what she was bred to do. She sniffed and snarfed until she found a pheasant scent, and she did it very well.

Later in the trailer, she found a stray pheasant feather, and another instinct of hers kicked in – that of eating whatever looked good.

She’s not too proud to get her picture taken with a feather stuck to her mouth and one ear flopped back. She’s confident we will love her anyway. Quite a humble innocent.

With most babies, every new item must be sniffed and if possible, eaten. Emma was no exception. She tried to eat the cord of the trailer’s electric heater when it was plugged in (luckily we caught her before she fried herself), she ate one of my brand new Birkenstocks,

and took her time working on a pair of slippers. (She doesn’t chew them now that she is all grown up, but she nibbles and nibbles over a long time, until there’s a substantial accumulation of damage.)

“Who? Me?”” she asks?

She’s not a puppy anymore and she doesn’t chew everything in sight, but she is still very focused on putting things in her mouth.

A friend of ours came over to help us out when our lawnmower broke down. He always brings dog biscuits as a treat for Emma, and this time was no exception. Emma got her dog cookie and followed the friend around the rest of the time he was here (as she always does).

Fast forward to the next morning when I took Emma out. Something reddish-orange caught my eye after she did her business. Was it the piece of carrot I had given her? Surely she would have chewed it more. Was it blood? OMG! I hope she’s okay.

I got a stick and poked around in the little chocolate wedding cake she had dropped, and brought the reddish-orange thing into the house. I washed it off, and couldn’t believe my eyes.

It wasn’t a dog biscuit, but it was something our friend had brought with him (and apparently lost in the grass as he was trimming the edges). It’s about an inch long and is made of a rubbery foamy material. Yep! You guessed it. It was an earplug.

But what a funny one it was. See the one hair on its head? Then go about a third of the way down on the right-hand side. Do you see the happy face? (I didn’t put that on it.) I think this earplug was happy to see the light of day again after his journey through the bowels of a spaniel innocently looking for another dog biscuit.