Dinner and a show (The Wind in the Willows)

“Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wild World," said the Rat. "And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or to me. I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all.”

Helen sent me the link below to a pizza eating groundhog today, which I absolutely loved.

https://twitter.com/abc7/status/1250492458686771200?s=11

The video reminded me of the menagerie of small mammals (and some that are not so small)  that creep, crawl and hop thru the grass in front of the porch of our cabin. Unlike some, I'm looking at you Justin, we are going to follow the Federal and Provincial guidelines about unnecessary travel. Which means we will miss spring at the cabin, and I suspect the little critters will miss the bird feeders. However since everyone in our circle has been spared the virus, knock on wood, we have nothing to complain about. 

Okay the moose and bear were photographed from the cabin 

bur across the slough. Which is just as well. 

“He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow, even - it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”

Departures

"Looked at from a distance, the forest seems 
Haunted. But safe within its narrow room 
Its light is innocent and green, as though 
Emerging from another dream of diminution 
We found ourselves of normal, human size, 
Attempting to touch the leaves above our heads. 
Why couldn't we have spent our summers here, 
Surrounded and growing up again? "

from Summer Home

by John Koethe

Meet the neighbours: Red Squirrels

One of the longest tenured of our mammalian neighbours is the Red Squirrel. It is probably the one I am most familar with as well, having encountered them in both the country and occassionally in the city since I moved west, They had been replaced by the larger Eastern Grey Squirrel in Sounthern Ontario where I grew up. In our Edmonton apartment one claimed the spruce tree next to the window of our third floor apartment and chattered at us when we entered the room. In one archaeological field camp one would drop a spruce cone 30 or more feet unto the corrugated plastic roof of the outhouse, which sounds like a gunshot in the narrow space. At the cabin the one moved in one year and began to build a nest at the peak of the   roof in the kitchen. We have also had a number of encounters with them in the outhouse which started when they attempted to fill it with mushrooms, spruce cones being in short supply in the aspen parklands. They also go after the young birds and we suspect they are responsible for the disappearance of the robin nestlings from the ledge behind the cabin. One also likes to come up on the porch in the early morning and proclaim its mastery of the territory. They also have the occasional dustup with somewhat mystified neighbours unaware of their status. 

"With an host of furious fancies

Whereof I am commander,

With a burning spear and a horse of air,

To the wilderness I wander. 

By a knight of ghosts and shadows, 

I summoned am to a tourney 

Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end: 

Methinks it is no journey.? "

from Tom O’Bedlam

Coming thru.

Excuse me, do you know who I am?

I am bigger then I look you know.

Okay the sneak attack.

Attack from the rear, he suspects nothing!

My rock.

Let's meet the neighbours; The Snowshoe Hares

  Several years ago, maybe four my records in this instance are not great. We saw a Snowshoe Hare that would appear in the evening from under the deck and wander around to the great annoyance of the dogs. This year when we arrived there were three, all roughly the same size. The males are actually smaller than the females. There appeared to be a bit of anomosity, with one being chased. It seems they are a bit territorial. Also I did look under the cabin, moved anything under there out and while they appear from underneath they are probably living in the brush in back of the cabin and coming out into the short grass in front. They do cut down vegetation to create  runs to use as escape routes and I wonder if the cleared area under the cabin functions as a large run. Since the cabin is raise four feet and open on three sides, The other side backs the dog run, this area then does provide a clear field of view.

Then one momentous day, I should mark these events on the calender. There were a couple of young ones. They were pretty cute.

The a month or so later I wandered out and there were three little ones, even smaller then the previous batch. And possibly cuter. It seem mom can produce three litters, (3-4 in a litter) 4 litters for my readers in southern B.C. They are born with their eyes open and with fur. They can eat grass with 10 days and are full grown in five months. One good point is unlike the Franklin's they will not form colonies, the young should move some distance away. Based on size I have seen as many as 8 over the course of the summer, But not at the same time so I suspect the out migration is continuous through out the summer. I have noticed that while the single hare never touched the few lilies I have planted or any of the annuals in the large wash tubs, this is no longer the case and I have raised some tubs and put in a bit of fence. They also seem to be out and about more, and while not a brazen as the Franklin's they are pretty brave around us. The also are the victims of many ticks, yuck. While the Snowhare is the smallest of the 26 species of hares worldwide, when one gets up on the lower deck to waltz around, those showshoes are quite the little precussion instruments. 

I did notice one of the adults also has this white line on top of it's head.

The things you see without tv.

"But as solace for this life of quietly existing, 

In the traces left behind by love, until the light holds,

And the world and the mind are one. One exists alone."

from Arguement in Isolation

by John Koethe

Books: 
Mammals of Alberta, Pattie & Fisher
The Natural History of Canadian Mammals, Donna Naughton