Welcome Wildlife

I’ve been reviving my bird garden for the coming winter months, for when the insects aren’t as plentiful and the shrubs all die down in the cold. We’re those people who toss handfuls of birdseed onto the blanket of pristine white snow, knowing the birds will make the seeds disappear faster than bags of bread when a hurricane nears. When the last of the hummingbirds have flown south, that’s the time I stock up on different seeds and fill the suet feeders with berry-laden block cakes.

And the salt licks, too, are fully replenished, sitting on the tree stumps the deer use like an office water cooler to gather and gossip about news of coyote sightings and Great Horned Owl conversations heard between the northwest and southwest corner trees. The foxes and bobcats haven’t been spotted lately, but we know they’re back in the thick trees on the dirt road side of the farm. The possums are welcome, keeping the lawn free of ticks that would travel inside on the legs of our dogs, but those armadillos are party crashers, showing up without an invitation, eyeing our new air conditioning unit like it’s a football player needing tackling. They succeeded, indirectly, in taking down the last one. And I don’t like them now for a new reason: they traipse across Fitz’s grave, and I just know if he could raise his little head up out of the ground, he’d take them down hard.

And so it’s time for the talk with Jay. I’m going to have Ollie, our dog who actually gets it, try to explain that back here in the woods on the farm, we welcome creatures and critters and yes, even the Slytherins. The Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws must appreciate the dark art types if we are to fully embrace the wild things of the farm. We live by Aldo Leopold’s iconic line from A Sand County Almanac: There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.

We are those who cannot.

What Jay Doesn’t Realize