Good morning everyone! It’s a nice, cool, autumn day here in the north. It is partly sunny, windy and a temp of 46F (8C). Not bad for this time of the year. The blue jays are busy fighting over the peanuts right now. Well, I should say two of them fight over the peanuts, the rest are quite content to just grab theirs and fly off to open it, before coming back for a second. One of those blue jays is especially slow, takes him so long to decide what peanuts he wants to take, he always wants to take two at a time. He puts one smaller one in his throat pouch and another in his beak. It’s that second peanut that takes him so long to decide on.

Once again yesterday he had 6 peanuts lined up in a row and he kept picking them up one by one, trying to figure out which one is the heaviest and therefore the best one to take. But the other blue jays don’t like to wait, so one comes down to distract him and Blue Boss will chase him away. While he is distracted, another comes down and takes one of his peanuts. This kept on until his entire row of peanuts was gone and he was left there looking around trying to figure out what happened. This goes on every time now so most of the time he goes faster. And this last bag of peanuts only has big peanuts, so he can only take one anyway.

Yesterday we almost had a disaster. I always look outside before opening the door to put out more food, but yesterday morning there was a chipmunk right beside the house, so I couldn’t see him. It was Scooter, and as soon as the door was open, he came inside and ran into the bedroom. Muffin was sleeping on my new deacon’s bench (I’ll be talking about that one tomorrow). But when I started calling Scooter, she promptly woke up and starting looking down at the floor. She doesn’t get so interested when I call her name. Sigh. I tried standing in front of Muffin so she couldn’t see Scooter, but it didn’t work. Down on the floor she came and I had to keep pushing her back, which she was getting annoyed about.

I was trying to get Scooter interested in a nice big peanut but all he did was come out and sniff it and then run back under the bed. Finally after nearly 10 minutes, though it felt much longer, he came closer to the door, so I opened the door and he ran out. I sat down while Muffin went searching for Scooter who was no longer inside. Oh, the look Muffin gave me! We could have ended up with a dead chipmunk, or Muffin escaping outside. Both are not good outcomes. I have only seen 2 chipmunks so far this morning, Choco and Cheeky. There was 5 still yesterday afternoon, so I’m sure that more will show up this afternoon too, once it warms up a bit. The clouds have gone, the sun is shining brilliantly. Maybe I can get some pictures today. Have a wonderful day everyone and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2021 Steve McLeod.