Keeping the World Safe from Gray Things

That is what I had hoped for when I built the platform for the quail block: quail! Gambel's Quail, and other small birds, or even other large birds.

But we have a surfeit of critters around our yard. Javelinas, especially, come by wishing for a garden patch, but content to insure that not a single seed kicked out of the bird feeder goes to waste. Once they had found a way to worry my first quail block to the ground--where a scene ensued reminiscent of football fans who had watched the game from the bar--very quickly demolished the whole block in about four minutes, I built the present platform, higher up, on posts driven into the ground.

Then our resident gray squirrel, who noticed the "q" in quail block, quite like the "q" in squirrel, claimed it for his own, as much as he could.

I do not "q"uite resent him, or her. Squirrels have to survive, too, a task complicated by the need of coyotes to make a living. And it keeps her, or him, away from the hanging bird feeder.

All of them--the birds, coyotes, javelinas, and squirrel--or maybe it is squirrels--keep our new mini-dog keen. Cooper is inside our fence, and the other critters our outside, mostly, but he resents their famiarity. And with an exception or two, it is he who is at risk should the fence not be there. I do not have the heart to tell him. He considers himself to be our guardian, protecting us from three-legged beasties, and things that go bump in the night.

Cooper: Keeping the World Safe from Gray Things

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