Joey Bond 007

Some of you might remember Joey from our episode on job hunting. He is an aspiring actor and tried out for what turned out to be a car hood ornament job. He wisely declined that job offer. His charisma and athleticism during the job interview attracted the attention of a Hollywood talent agent who happened to be vacationing at the Woodpile.

Earlier this year, it was announced that the current actor playing James Bond 007 was retiring from the role. Efforts to fill the role with another human actor failed miserably with their test audiences. The talent search was expanded to include other species.

Joey flew out to Hollywood expecting the standard interview: read some lines of script in front of the camera. Instead he found himself at a “boot camp” interview. Actors had to perform a series of action scenes. It was a grueling interview process and most prospective actors bailed out in a matter of hours. Joey wasn’t one to back down from a real challenge. He grew up at the Woodpile and spent his youth being chased by cats, dogs, foxes, and coyotes. He could climb trees, chuck wood, dig burrows, and raid bird feeders. His country upbringing was invaluable.

I tagged along and documented the interview process. Here are some highlights:

The first task was to find your way through the maze of a pile of firewood. Most of the actors got completely lost. Joey made it through in record time.

The second task was to cross a parking lot without becoming a snack for this very hungry hawk.

 Joey used the parked cars as cover to avoid being detected.

The third task was run across the top of the woodpile. Sounds too easy. You guessed right.

Unclear as to what he might encounter, Joey carefully noted all the places he could hide along his route before starting.

When Joey heard a faint noise, he dove for cover. A few moments later, he jumped up out of his hiding place to find the Woodpile riddled with arrows

That was a close call.

The casting director was duly impressed.

The final task was to load, aim and fire a seed cannon at ten targets.

To speed up the loading process, Joey filled his cheeks with seeds then loaded the cannon. This cut the time in half.

Joey announces he has finished loading the seed cannon.

Joey fires the seed cannon and hits 10 bullseyes securing his position as the next 007 agent. Now the script writers have to find an evil villain worthy of being Joey Bond’s adversary, no easy task.

 

Thanksgiving 2021

By now most of you have probably seen the news reports about a turkey shortage for Thanksgiving. In interviews, Farmers are saying “Every turkey on the farm is already sold.” Well, us Woodpilers might have something to do with that. For a number of years we have run a “sanctuary city” for turkeys. We usually have thirty or forty show up trying to avoid the hunters. It seems word has gotten out, and we have attracted quite a crowd. A regular “Underground Railroad” has formed to aid escaped turkeys from farms all over New England.

As our regular followers know, our family puts together a large vegetarian dinner for all the critters at the Woodpile. With pandemic restrictions being eased and everyone getting their booster shots, we had to plan for a larger than normal crowd. With some volunteer help, I took the market basket out of storage we went to the local farm stand. We found a wonderful selection of squash and pumpkins with lots of seeds inside of them. I got a little carried with the shopping and bought the largest ones I could find. I didn’t give a second thought as to how we get them home. I had to call Mom and get a ride back to the Woodpile.

Looks at these beauties.

My wife just informed me she invited another twenty-five guests, double the number I planned for!

Lets approach this logically. According to my Thanksgiving Dinner app, the average critter eats 3 oz … how much does this squash weigh?

Oh boy, it looks like we are going to be short …
and the farm stand closed for the season five minutes ago!

Less than 12 hours to dinner and I am doomed. Maybe I can hide under this leaf until after Thanksgiving is over?

My friend Bushy has dropped by. I will ask his advice.

“Chippy, the short answer is you need more food!
Why don’t to ask each guest to bring something to share.”

A simple but brilliant idea!

 

 
What a dinner!

Nothing like farm fresh raw veggies.

Chippy Jr. posted this rather comic pose on social media.

 

A special message from our honored guests “Happy Thanksgiving.”

Lessons Learned

At the beginning of the summer, I tried to instill in my nephew that he was now an adult ‘munk and had to take responsibility for his own winter supply of nuts and seeds. But being young and thinking he knew better, he spent the entire summer partying. Well, November rolled around and he thought he would just spent the winter with his parents only to find out they moved to Florida! They took their entire stockpile of seeds with them. He had an empty burrow all to himself.

My nephew inherited the family resourcefulness gene. Plan B was to empty a few bird feeders and be well stocked for the winter. What he didn’t take into consideration was our winter contingent of birds had arrived and every squirrel within a mile radius had descended on the feeders. He had fierce competition. He ran from feeder to feeder only to be chased off by bossy Blue Jays and plump squirrels. Even the small Chickadees dived bombed him. After three hours, he only managed to collect ten seeds. Mom who puts the bird feeders out, took pity on my poor nephew. She figured he had learned his lesson at this point. She setup a cinder block, filled it will seeds and covered it with a log. She left what she thought was an opening just big enough for him to squeeze through.

My nephew couldn't believe his good fortune.
He boosted “Its all mine!” I think he cursed himself with those words.

Rather than go through the effort of moving all the seeds to the security of a burrow,
he decided to moved into the cinder block.

The cinder block was in the middle of the birder feeding station
and all the various critters had their eyes on all of those seeds. 

 
My nephew seemed oblivious to the situation.

Sylvester, a glutinous squirrel from a neighboring community could smell those seeds.

My nephew finally comprehended the bad situation he was in.
At this point he had only one option, retreat!

 

Sylvester wanted those seeds.

He wiggled and squirmed his way through that narrow opening.

And finally reached the seeds.

A very defeated nephew came crawling up to my burrow looking for help.
I went to evaluate the situation.

 

I tried to reason with Sylvester and explain these weren’t his seeds.
All he did was make some snide remarks.

 

I needed some leverage in these negotiations. I shifted the log to make the entrance a wee bit smaller as Sylvester soon discovered to his dismay.

Sylvester quickly realized he had to apologize and make amends. He gave up the location of where he had buried his horde of seeds and nuts. We gathered up sufficient to replace all the seeds he had eaten.

We released him.

 

He quickly hopped on social media and warned his buddies
to stay away from crazy chipmunks at the Woodpile.

 

Fall Chores

This weekend we had plenty of volunteers to help stack the wood. Just about every kid at the Woodpile had dreams haunted by the Ghost of the Woodpile. This is perfect, for the first time in years I will finally get out the wood stacking business. At least that was what I thought. Somehow I got volunteered to train the kids on the proper technique of stacking wood. Yes, there is a right way and wrong way. If you don’t do it correctly, it will all come crashing down on you.

 

The kids were a bit apprehensive about running into the Ghost of the Woodpile

 

This poor fellow was completely terrified.

 Once one kid decided it was safe to venture out the rest joined her.

The pile is getting too high for me to reach down and grab a log. Can someone toss it up to me?

What? You expect me to get my paws dirty?

 

Are you sure it is a good idea for me to be “tossing” logs up that high?

Oh boy, the building inspector just showed up.

The kids tried to bribe the inspector with a tasty snack but that didn’t work very well.

The inspector ate all the snacks but still condemned our Woodpile.

The right hand end pile didn’t pass inspection. We had to redo part of it.

One of the kids re-positions a load bearing log.

How much more wood do we have to stack?

Clapping my hands I congratulated the crew on a job well done.