The Rotten Little Buggers!

No, I am not talking about the U. S. House of Representatives! I am talking about pack rats! (The difference is that I have a soft and forgiving place in my heart for pack rats: they are working hard to make a living.)

Two or three days ago, I bought two bags of bird seed to feed my feathered free loaders in the back yard, but the press of time and my own procrastination caused me to leave both bags in the bed of the pickup. Today I proposed to put the bird seed into two or three five-gallon buckets in the back yard, from whence I fill the bird feeder. But the buckets out back, for some odd reason, were tipped over and emptied of what little seed had been there. I have not solved that mystery, unless it is a deer; something, at least, capable of getting over the back yard fence.

Then I looked into the bed of the pickup. Pack rats had chewed holes in both bags, and shoveled out more than two gallons of seed into the pickup bed. Rotten little buggers! Not only that: they defecated into their tailgating spread. So that part of the evidence is tossed outside the backyard fence, as a reward to the perpetrators.

The rest of the bird seed is stored in five gallon buckets in back, lashed to a tree branch to hold them upright.

Now we shall see!

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