Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Daily Pics #310.
Good morning everyone! It’s another one of those heavy cloud days making it very dull looking once again. But this is kind of typical winter weather so not really a big deal. There is also those lazy type of snowflakes floating down from those thick dark clouds. And it’s not windy this morning so they look real nice. Oops, the snowflakes have stopped. But the evening grosbeaks are here now filling up the feeder. They definitely add some beautiful, bright color on these dull cloudy days. Like having a feeder full of bright yellow lights. Hmm, something must have scared them. They flew. I mean totally gone.
But the redpolls have taken their place, 15 of them now, filling up the feeder. Well, sort of filling it up. They are so small that even 15 doesn’t do much. The feeder could hold twice that many redpolls. They seldom sit still, always running around searching for scraps of food among the shells. The grosbeaks open the sunflower seeds and eat the seed inside. But often there is a bit of that seed that sticks to the shells and that’s what the redpolls search for since they have such a hard time opening the seeds themselves. So the two birds work together very well so that nothing is wasted. The grosbeaks have returned again. They certainly have no trouble opening those sunflower seeds. They do it amazingly fast. And they empty that feeder quickly. So I put a more than normal supply of seeds out there this morning.
Chickadees were the first birds here this morning, but the redpolls were not far behind. The chickadees like the hanging feeders best. So, while the other birds are fighting for position on the feeder above, the chickadees are going back and forth quite happily to the hanging feeders. They just grab and seed and head back to this one bush to open their seeds. It’s really quite amazing how they can hold that slippery seed and then pound it open with their beaks and eat the seed inside. Without dropping it. Though on rare occasions they do drop it and immediately dive down to retrieve the seed, usually catching it before it hits the snow. They don’t like to waste food either.
Well, this morning, and all this week, I am showing a male and female of different bird species. Yesterday it was the redpolls, and today we have the evening grosbeaks, though I have shown these birds before, but the pics are different anyway. The featured image is the female evening grosbeak and the pic above is the male. Those lazy snowflakes are falling once more. I hope you all have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2020 Steve McLeod.
20/20 Investigations, Inc. The Curious Letter. Chapter 11.
I quickly got out my listening device and put the end over the hole and the other end at my ear, plus an end for the cats to share. This magnifies the sound. “So he wants 2 days to find the treasure, that sounds okay, but I don’t know about letting them go,” said the man. He was a big, roundish kind of man with a large beard and a gruff voice. “We just promise to let them go, once they find the treasure, we kill that PI and his cats. Then we get the treasure and Lena too,” said Charlie. “My wife is sick now,” he continued, “she will not live long, so she can’t interfere with our plans anymore. We get the treasure and Lena, what could be better?” “What if Lena won’t work for us?”, asked the other man. “Gerard, not to worry, she will do anything to help her grandpa and I am good at fooling everyone around here, even getting good at crying, that really makes me sound sincere,” said Charlie.
Then they both had a good laugh. “You’re a hard old man Charlie,” said Gerard. “Where there is good money involved nothing else matters, not even family,” Charlie said firmly. “Okay, we’ll do it that way then, but watch that PI closely, he might be planning something,” said Gerard as he headed out the back door. “Yes, I keep my eyes on him real good, no one fools Charlie Dubois,” he said. They both had another good laugh and the man left into the night. The cats looked at each other, then at me. Meow, meow.=That human Charlie, he very bad man, we get him now. Both cats turned to go so I scooped them up and held them. Meow, meow?=Why you not let us go? “It’s not time yet Muffin, we have some things to do first, like finding this treasure,” I said.
Meow?=Why not look for treasure after we fight men? “Do you know where these men are,?” I asked. The cats looked at each other. “If we do something to Charlie now, then the other men might do something too, and we don’t know how many of them there are, could be 20 men, that would be a problem,” I said. “We need to get them out in the open, and the treasure will help us do that,” I continued. Meow, meow.=Okay, maybe you right, we find treasure and use for bait, catch lots of big fish. Meow.=Oh, that good, I like idea. Meow, meow.=Thank you. Meow!=Welcome! “Hey, wait a minute, that was my…”, I began to say. Meow, meow?=Why you waste time, how you explain to Lena that human Charlie such bad man?
“Sigh, I really don’t know,” I said, “perhaps it would be better to say nothing right now, she will find out for herself later, I’m afraid she might not believe us if we try to say anything now.” Meow.=Yep, I agree, she get mad at us if we say something, have no proof, only what we heard. “Exactly,” I said, “now let’s continue looking for clues.” While the cats were sniffing around I read the letter again, but there was nothing in the letter that talked about that old homestead we found. Maybe I’m wrong about that place. It does talk about stairs going up and down where one can find the key to unlock the mystery. This letter is older than this house, and the fallen down house at the other site was only a one story house, no stairs anywhere over there.
This is one part that made it hard for everyone that had looked for this treasure, and I can understand why. On that map there is 2 buildings marked that were not at the site we were at. Is it a different place? Did one of those buildings have stairs at one time? If so they are certainly gone now and that would make it very difficult to find the treasure. I started looking more closely at the attic and how it was constructed. Hmm, could this place be older than it looks? The pine board floor in here looks too old. I think this house had a major renovation done a long time ago, that would make the house older than what we have been told. Meow, meow.=I find something over here. Mr. Cat and I go over to Muffin. Meow, meow?=Look, see here? Look maybe like a door. “A hidden door that maybe leads to a hidden passageway and maybe more stairs,” I said, “that’s just what we are looking for.”
To Be Continued.
Pictures of Mr. Cat are kindly supplied by his human, Nina.
Previous chapters and more stories can be found on my home page under 20/20 Investigations, Inc.
©2020 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 