Night Life at the Woodpile

About a month ago, a producer from the PBS Nature documentary series dropped by the Woodpile. She wanted to film the “Night Life” at the Woodpile. We politely tried to explain the Woodpile is a rather boring place after  9 pm. The Blackbird Tavern closes then, and all us chipmunks, squirrels and birds are fast asleep. You might find a few mice romping about looking for left over sunflower seeds but that is about it. The producer insisted that a place like the Woodpile which has inspired all of the interesting day time stories shared on this blog must have interesting night life. We told her she was welcome to spend a few nights with her film crew and we recommended bringing a good book to read.

Shortly after that conversation, a big semi-truck showed up. The film crew started unloading all sorts of high-tech night vision cameras and motion sensor equipment. The Woodpile looked like a Hollywood film set. Mrs. Spot declared a school holiday so the kids could watch all of the excitement. Naturalists scurried around studying all the critter tracks in the snow to see the best place to install cameras. The Bottomless Cup café for the first time in its history actually ran out of coffee. Apparently these human film crews live on caffeine.

After a week of filming in sub-arctic temperatures, through snow storms, and howling winds the crew packed up and left. The producer arranged for a sneak preview of what they discovered. I thought I would share it with you.

First surprise was we have a new nocturnal neighbor. I had to dig out my animal field guide – this is an opossum. Apparently, it loves sunflower seeds and comes by the bird feeders every night looking for leftover seeds that fell on the ground.

We discovered that one of our human neighbors got two cats! They are called “Tom” and “Jerry’ and fancy themselves apex predators. Tom had his fur dyed with tiger stripes and Jerry got his fur dyed black like a ninja. Like their cartoon counterpart, they are inept house cats. They roam around the Woodpile sniffing everything while the mice play practical jokes on them and laugh.

The mice weren’t laughing when this bushy tailed red fox showed up.

   

The fox took off in a real hurry and everyone was relived until we found out the reason why. A coyote decided the Woodpile was its hunting territory!!!

At an emergency meeting of the Woodpile Council, we hired a night watchman who was “armed and smelly” to protect the Woodpile from all threats. We forget to mention this to the film crew and they got a very smelly surprise.

The human naturalists were all excited about these images. They said we were witnessing evolution in action. Bunnies normally hop around on four paws. This bunny had evolved to walk on two paws, what the humans called bipedal walking. This had never been captured before on film.

New England Cooking School

This past fall I enrolled in a New England cooking class at the Critter Culinary Institute. The class was designed for beginners like myself. The class focused on traditional New England ingredients like farm fresh eggs, acorns and sunflower seeds. The first class involved gathering the ingredients. For the suburban critters used to dumpster diving this was a new experience. Living at the Woodpile, I was already an expert at natural foraging. However, collecting the eggs was a new experience to me. It is easy for you humans to collect the eggs, you are 10X bigger than those crazy chickens. But us ‘munks are a wee bit smaller. The chickens thought chasing us around the hen house was the most fun they had in years.

If you have never done any cooking or baking before, there is a lot to learn. We had to learn how “read” a recipe – who would have thought there was so many skills need to “read.” These recipes are written in a version of English I have never heard of before. What is the difference between a “tsp” and a “tbsp”? Next we had to learn the proper use of mixing spoons, rubber spatulas, whisks, sifters and whole host other “utensils.” Things got really interesting when we had to grease the baking pans with shortening. Suffice to say, I got more shortening on myself than the pan. I look like some punk rocker with my fur all greased. I had to take a bath in Dawn dish detergent to get cleaned up.

By the third class, the teacher thought we were ready to actually bake something. We were each assigned a cooking log counter and given our ingredients and a recipe book. We only had an hour to complete our task. I felt like I was on the British Baking Show. The pressure was on. What was our “technical challenge”? A traditional acorn and sunflower cake. The first task was to shell the seeds and acorns. Piece of cake for me although some of the suburban students struggled with this task. Our human teacher made the lesson about cracking the eggs open with one hand look easy. Even using all four of my paws, I couldn’t crack it. Finally I stuck the bowl on the floor and rolled the egg off the counter and it splattered in the bowl. I thought this was a brilliant solution until I spent fifteen minutes picking out the egg shells.

My assigned cooking log counter in class was bigger than my entire burrow. Who knew there were so many recipe books on New England cooking. These were the “textbooks” for the class

I am not an expert, but this recipe appears to be doing everything backwards

… Oh, I am reading it upside down, that could explain things.

How do you open the egg cartoon?

That’s ingenious the cover is hinged.

Yikes these eggs are as big as me, how am I supposed grab one and crack it open?

A traditional New England ingredient – acorns!

The recipe says to place the ingredients in the mixing bowl and combine.
I forgot which one is the bowl. Look this has a mixing spoon, this must be it.

What do you mean this is a baking pan not a mixing bowl?!

Can I get some more acorns … I sorta ate all of them.

Nose Ball World Cup

I spent most of the day pacing back and forth in front of the mailbox waiting for the mailmunk to arrive. If the ground hadn’t been frozen I would have worn a deep rut in the ground. I was anxious for my ticket to the World Nose Ball Cup to arrive. After many years, it is finally being held in the United States. In fact, it is being played in sunny warm Florida. I saved up my seeds for two years to buy this ticket and pay for the travel expenses.

Nose Ball is a two player game which requires excellent ball handling skills and the genius of a chess master. The game is quite simple. Each player must arrange six balls to match the layout shown in a randomly selected diagram. The players take alternating turns in which they can send one ball flying across the ground with their nose - sort of like hitting a pool ball with a cue stick. Where does the strategy come in? The two players have to share the same six balls but arrange them in different layouts. Each turn a player has to choose from making a play that advances them towards finishing their layout or sending a ball off in a direction that is going to mess up their opponent’s game. You can even knock another ball out of position like in Croquet. The best players manage to achieve both aims with a single move.

The balls are different sizes, weights and made from different materials. Each ball behaves differently when hit with the nose. The seams of the softball are the trickiest to handle. Like a good baseball pitcher, you can make it curve – useful for moving around another ball your opponent put in your way.

The balls are lined up for the start of the game

The referee checks the balls before the game begins.

The reigning world champion, Alicia, makes her opening move.

Her opponent, A-Rod thoughtfully evaluates where to hit the ball to.

 In Nose Ball you are allowed to use your paws to rotate the ball to change the position of the seams prior to hitting it with the nose.

Alicia plans to use the white golf ball to bounce off the basketball, sending the basketball flying in the wrong direction for A-Rod while the golf ball angles off to land in the proper place.

With his ball knocked out of place, A-Rod now has to make a tricky shot to get the basketball back to its correction position.

Alicia takes advantage of A-Rod being one move behind her and works to get the yellow smiley face ball into the right spot.

A-Rod decides to move the softball next knowing it is too big and heavy to be affected by any other balls hitting it. A smart move.

The crowd on their socially distanced stumps, watches intently while cheering for their favorite player.

After six agonizing hours of play with neither player gaining a competitive edge, Alicia makes a risky move which will either win her or cost her the game. She stops and uses a meditative technique to calm her nerves and slow her breathing down … then she makes her move …

Unbelievable! With one move she managed to reposition three balls into their correction positions and form the winning layout.

Painting the Woodpile

 In the fall, we saw our human neighbor Jim painting his porch. It took several hours to do. For the kids at the Woodpile, it was a source of live entertainment, better than TV and video games. The entertainment part was Jim seemed to get more paint on himself than on the porch! One of the kids got brave enough to ask why he was painting. He explained the paint helped to preserve the wood. When the painting job wrapped up, the kids went home and I didn’t think about it again.

Well, a couple of weeks later, I heard a loud and persistent knocking at the burrow door. I opened it the find Mom wanting a word with me.  She asked me to accompany her to the Woodpile. This is what we found.

 Mom carefully explained that when you burn wood in the wood stove with paint on it, toxic fumes from the paint are released into the air. This is bad for the environment, (Mom uses wood from the “Woodpile” to heat her above ground wooden burrow. I have tried to convince her that an underground burrow is far more energy efficient. – No luck so far.)

Mom spotted some “evidence” a pile of sunflower seeds. And then we heard laughter and giggling come from within the Woodpile.

The next thing we know a young ’munk pops his head out of the pile. He went from all smiles to that "I'm in trouble” look.

He started edging his way to the right for a quick escape.

Next Chippy Jr poked out from around the bottle of paint. He sheepishly explained that he and his friends wanted to protect the wood from rotting. I jumped into the conversation and told Mom about the porch painting. Mom seemed to understand and made them an offer. She would supply some scrap lumber they could make a play house out of and paint, if they would refrain from painting the Woodpile in the future. The offer was cheerfully accepted.

Speaking about painting - I got an interesting question from one of my fans: “How did the chipmunk get its stripes? Is it genetic?” – I will let you in on a chipmunk secret – the stripes are painted on by a professional fur dyer. The stripes last about six months before having to be applied again.

Recycled Christmas Decoration

I hope you had a wonderful holiday and have recovered from your New Year Eve reveries. January 2^nd at the Woodpile is the traditional day to take down the decorations and store them for next year. We had splurged on a wreath made from real spruce fir branches. It was obvious we couldn’t put it away for next year. The needles would dry out and fall off eventually. On the other paw, we didn’t want to break with 250 years of Woodpile tradition and leave a decoration up past the 2^nd day of the new year. This called for a creative solution.

Being environmentally conscious critters, we wanted to recycle our wreath. The kids of course wanted to turn it into a giant bonfire and make s’mores - graham crackers, toasted marshmallows, chocolate and roasted sunflower seeds . What you have never had s’mores with roasted sunflower seeds? They are delicious, gotta try it sometime. Tomato Bob wanted to put it into his compost bin. The general sentiment was we were rather attached to our wreath and wanted to enjoy it for a bit longer. A little chickadee came by and suggested we turn it into a bird feeder. Everyone thought it was a great idea. The new bird feeder was an instant hit.

 

The new "feeder" quickly became a popular pace to take selfies.