Breakfast at the Woodpile

Mom decided to hold a free breakfast at the Woodpile for all feathered friends and four pawed critters. Word of the event traveled faster than the speed of light over social media. The one thing that gets a critter’s attention faster than food, is FREE food.

I dropped by to take a few photos for the blog. After snapping a couple of dozen photos, I decided to check the lighting and other settings by reviewing the photos in the camera. As I was flipping the photos, I had a strong sense of deja vu. I swear I had seen these mug shots before. Chippy Jr. was looking over my whiskers at the photos, and said excitedly, “Hey dad, those look just the like the most wanted posters in the Post Office.”

I knocked on Mom’s door and asked where she had posted her announcement. She sheepishly acknowledged she didn’t know much about the internet and social media but had heard about something called facebook for humans. Assuming there was an equivalent service for critters, she did some searching on the net and found “critterbook, the darkside.” I had to explain to Mom that was a site on the critter dark web. She had just invited the entire criminal critter underground to a free breakfast!

The gangster Bugsy Rabbit, and Gimpy the Duck (notorious bank robber) share a meal of cracked corn

This Rufous Sided Towhee is an expert safe cracker

This Baltimore Oriole is wanted in Maryland for pulling off the largest armor truck gourmet grape jelly heist in history. Rumored to be valued at one million seeds!

Bugsy swaps stories with the “Nutcracker” (This squirrel scammed thousands of humans out of their cash by selling phony tickets to the Nutcracker Ballet).

The Nutcracker keeps a safe distance from the infamous Phantom Chipmunk

They are joined by Big Blue, a serial graffiti artist, who likes to target expensive sports car with his signature blue paint

Big Blue envisions the Nutcracker with a deep blue fur coat

Robin-hood steals grape jelly from the criminal masterminds to give to the poor.

King of the Mountain

I was on my way to the Bottomless Cup for my morning coffee when my forward motion was suddenly stopped. I pried my eyelids open to see what the problem was. All I could see was a huge pile of compost blocking my usual route. I vaguely recalled Mom warning us she was having a couple of wheel barrow loads of compost delivered. I should have paid better attention. Now the big question, do I go over the pile or around it? Maybe I will just burrow under it.

Returning to the burrow with my coffee, I told the family about my morning adventures. The kids were all excited and ran off to find their friends. The kids from the Sticks neighborhood challenged the kids from the Woodchoppers neighborhood of the Woodpile to a friendly game of King of the Mountain. The kids got out their scissors and colored pencils, and made a larger than life size crown.

 

 Lily is satisfied she has got the crown arranged just right on top of the mountain.

She challenges the other kids yelling “I am Queen of the Mountain, hear me roar!”

Lily’s teeth start chattering as she watches Maxine, captain of the girls wrestling team, approach.

The Challenger

Maxine, the first challenger cautiously approaches the fortress and takes possession. All efforts to overthrow Maxine fail. Lily finally realizes the fortress doesn’t have a water well. She begins to formulate a plan to recapture the crown.

All this hard work makes Maxine thirsty. The nearest source of water is 30 feet away.

While Maxine is getting a drink, Lily moved the crown 

to a more defensible location on top of a stump.

Maxine attempts to scale the vertical wall of the Stump Fortress but is unsuccessful.

Maxine then attempts an assault by use of a siege pole.

Lily quickly puts an end to that.

Maxine builds a new fort on the mountain. It looks impenetrable.

“I dare you weaklings to attack my fort”

Maxine discovers a flaw.

She forgot to build a wall on the backside, it is wide open!

In moments the fortress is completely overrun.

At the end of the game, Lily is crowned “Queen of the Stump”

Urban Squirrel Family

My buddy, Bushy the Squirrel, comes from a large family. He has relatives all over the place. He was showing some photos of his cousin Elmira who lives in a suburban neighborhood. I never fully realized what a great life we have at the Woodpile until Bushy told me her story.

Elmira found a nice cozy home in the wall of a house. It was perfect: warm and protected from the weather. Having found the perfect home, she decided to raise a family as a single parent. One morning, she was woken up by her two kids who had this terrified look on their faces. They told her they were trapped alive, the front (and only) door had disappeared. Groggily she got out of bed to investigate. As she bumped into the piece of plywood covering the door she was jolted wide awake even without her morning coffee.

She sharpened her teeth and went to work chewing her way through the wood. Wood chips went flying everywhere. She finally made an opening large enough to squeeze through. Popping her head through the new hole, she discovered the pesky humans had also nailed mesh wire over the shingles above the plywood. Good thing they ran out wire mesh and didn’t cover the plywood! Elmira vented her rage over this indignity by grabbing her wire cutters and cutting the human’s cable tv/phone/internet cable. A small and sadly short lived victory for critterkind.

The humans responded by getting a very large and fearsome looking guard dog. Alexa, the guard dog, kept calling out, “Come out and lets play a game of chase. It will be lots of fun.” Elmira was stuck in her house with two teenage kids for days. She tried pelting Alexa with acorns but the dog was too quick and dodged them. She tried calling the dog catcher but it turned out the human owner was the dog catcher’s fishing buddy.

Alexa was momentarily distracted by a runner going down the street. Elmira jumped from the hole onto the dog’s back. The dog took one look at this “killer” squirrel and flew over the chain link fence in a single bound never to be seen again.

Elmira carefully checked the yard for any other hidden dangers.

Satisfied it was now safe, she called the kids out for their first survival lessons.

First lesson was the “art of tree climbing.”

Elmira’s two kids, a son and daughter, had no problem going up the tree … but climbing down head first was a scary idea. Her son refused to come down.

Mom had to climb up the tree to give her son a pep talk. That was a complete failure. The kid refused to climb down. So, time for the backup plan A. Mom produced a chocolate covered acorn.

The kid’s eyes lit up with anticipation. No amount of hugs was going to get 

Mom to give him the candy.

Mom turned it into a game of chase straight down the tree!

After a moment the kid wised up and he refused to participate in the game of chase.

Well it was onto backup plan B. Mom gave the kid the chocolate covered acorn.

The kid found a nice perch in the tree to eat his treat.

 

Then Elmira gave her daughter who had climbed down the tree the rest of the bag of chocolate covered acorns. Her son horrified at the thought of his sister getting all the candies came flying down the tree without even thinking about what he was doing.

His sister wasn’t about to give up her treats so easily.

She teased him by eating the candy in front of him while he looked on helpless.

Then Mom told her she had to share.

Mom entertained the kids with a magic trick

in which it appeared she had stretched her body to double its length.

Cleanout: Trash or Treasure?

I have been binge watching one of those cable TV shows where humans buy cheap houses, fix them up, and sell them for a handsome profit. I thought I would try my paws at burrow “flipping.” I bought a burrow that belonged to an elderly couple who have passed on to the great sunflower seed patch in the sky. The kids live in California and wanted to get rid of the burrow cheap. I got the keys and opened the place up. It was like a museum of obsolete technology: VCR tapes, cassette tapes, floppy disks, transistor radio, clothes pins, and protractor & compass. Apparently the old ‘munk was an engineer at Bell Labs way back in the day.

I had a 40 cubic inch dumpster delivered and started cleaning things out. It took me two days to lug this junk out. Boy was I parched by all the effort. I decided to go home and drink the last bottle of Guinness Sunflower Seed beer I had.

When I got back the dumpster in the late afternoon it was completely empty. I only had one beer, I swear, I can’t be drunk. Think a minute, ahhh, lets check the doorbell security camera.

Wow that is Mrs. Sotheby herself, the famous antiques auctioneer from New York.

What does she want with an old transistor radio? Let me look it up in antiques price guide … what??? It is worth 5000 seeds. (If I get lucky I will get a 1000 seeds for the fixed up burrow.)

Oh look, it is Woody the furniture maker. He has got his eye on the compass and protractor.

This chipmunk looks familiar …

This is really embarrassing. It is my teacher Mrs. Spot dumpster diving like a trash can tipping raccoon. She must be after that hard to find Diana Ross cassette tape.

No, it can’t be, yup it is my wife. She is grabbing the clothes pin.

She has been talking about doing more for the planet like using a clothes line rather than the dryer.

Here is the Honorable Mayor of the Woodpile. He must be looking for floppy disks for the antiquated government computer system they have at City hall.

Here comes Bushy, lets turn on the audio and listen, “Word is going around the Woodpile about free antiques. I going to get rich selling them on Critter-Bay.”

“Maybe I will find some gold coins!”

“Its empty, this must be some sort of practical joke. Just wait until I get my paws on Chippy.”