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.