Now that summer has rolled in, it reminds me how much I love my back yard. I live in suburban Burlington, out in the New North End. And even though I’m not out in the country, my yard backs up against a wooded area. We’re lucky to live in a city with so much green space. It allows me to enjoy a piece of the Wild Kingdom almost every day.
The little skunk that spent most of the spring digging up my lawn for Japanese Beetle grubs has shifted his habits and now shows up under the bird feeder in the morning and evening, while it’s light out. He scruffs around for birdseed that has fallen from the feeder. Most alarmed are the many squirrels in the yard, whose prime feeding spot has been usurped by our smelly guest. They view this activity with worried looks on their faces, before they give up and run back to the woods.
A little raccoon has also discovered the feeders. In years previous I had a family of raccoons in the yard. Those clever creatures actually figured out how to open the bird feeders. They would take turns wallowing in sunflower seeds, cleaning out the feed every evening. Our current raccoon is happily solo and sticking to the ground, for now. He’s a late evening snacker and, as yet, hasn’t run into the skunk.
A while ago I heard two crows screaming in the back yard. When I looked out, I saw they were chasing a red fox. I gave out a yell when I saw her. She looked at me and skedaddled into the woods. The fox is harder to spot than most of the other wildlife. Once in a rare while we’ll see her with a mouse or, on occasion, a squirrel, headed back to her nest to feed her kids.
I’m kind of amazed that we have so many foxes in Burlington, to be honest, since we don’t have very many wild predators left.
But there’s another predator that visits the yard. And that would be the various neighborhood cats that wait under the bushes and kill the unwary juncos, chickadees and juvenile cardinals. I’ve actually tried buying smelt and spreading them in the yard to distract the felines. It turns out, they won’t touch the fish; they’re just there to kill the birds.
My secret hope is that our skunk turns into a veritable Pepe Le Pu and falls in love with all of those black cats. I imagine designing a motion activated white dye sprayer to skunkify the cats but, lucky for the cats, I’m not very good at building things like that.
In the meantime, I’m enjoying both the wildlife in my back yard and Burlington city life at the same time. I just wish summer would last a bit longer.
