Squirrel Mecca

I love these photos.  My Dad sent them to me - they show his front stairs and his driveway:

The question they bring to my mind is, how many gray squirrels can one man have in his yard?

I don't know the answer for certain, but I know it's A Whole Lot.  My Dad's yard has sort of inadvertently become the neighborhood squirrel mecca.  Most of the time if you look out in his back yard, there are a dozen or so birds at the feeders, and nearly as many squirrels on the ground under the feeders looking for dropped seeds.

For years when I was a kid the squirrels were sort of the enemy because they'd get into the bird feeders.  It's amazing just how quickly one lowly gray squirrel can reduce an expensive bird feeder to a pile of little plastic shavings.

It took my Dad years to figure out the ultimate squirrel baffle for the feeder pole.  He tried live trapping and relocating squirrels, who I swear just came back no matter how far we transported them.  I think he gave up on that tactic when it seemed as though 3 squirrels moved in for each one he removed.  He tried all sorts of other measures to discourage them from getting into the feeders, including greasing the pole to deter them from climbing it.  Grease didn't work, but ultimately it turned out he just needed the right shape and size of baffle on the pole, which he ultimately discovered through trial and error.

Despite the years-long battle, somehow the gray squirrels seemed to grow on him over the years.  I totally get why.  I have a hard time being in a bad mood while watching a squirrel.  They're such neurotic, daft, jolly little creatures, with their twitching tails and happy hopping.

Dad long ago gave up on trying to evict the gray squirrels from his yard.  He knows a few of the regulars and can tell them apart.  He takes pains to feed extra goodies to the ones who have mange (as evidenced by their bare naked little rat-like tails) to help them stay warm through the winter.  He's had squirrels with all sorts of injuries from cars, dogs, cats and each other, and squirrels with seemingly strange neurological problems, like the one who would slowly tip over to the side whenever he tried to sit upright.  He was quite charming, in a sad sort of way.

I swear the word is out in the entire Central New York gray squirrel community that if you're in bad shape, go to my Dad's house.  The pickings are good there.  Whenever I look at the squirrels we run into anywhere on our hikes, I'm always struck by how skinny they look compared with the robust ones in my Dad's yard.

He's also had quite a number of squirrels who come running toward him when he goes out to fill the bird feeders.  It didn't take them long to learn who keeps peanuts in his pockets along with his spare change.  For a while he had one who, when he was hungry, would climb up on the deck and launch himself at the kitchen window, sticking to the screen like velcro.  The sound he made when he hit that screen would make me jump just about out of my skin. 

For a while he had another (or perhaps even the same one) who, whenever someone opened the back door, would come running full tilt at the storm door and launch himself at it, hitting it with a thunderous bang and sticking to it.  I have no idea what that little fellow found to stick to on the smooth metal door.  The squirrel hitting the screen on the window was amusing, but the one who launched himself seemingly at you to land on the door was straight up disconcerting.

Any time anyone opens the garage doors at his house, a search of the garage is advisable before closing the door again.  A squirrel has gotten trapped in there more than once, that's for sure.  Although given the amount of black oil sunflower seed in the garage, it's not like they'd starve in there - they'd just make a mess.

Dad suffers them all with grace and good humor.  Even when they chew on his deck and scare the dickens out of him by launching at windows and doors at high velocity, the worst he'll say to them is "Shoo!  Stop that!"  Judging by the numbers of squirrels in his yard, he apparently never says it convincingly enough for the little ruffians to stop their antics for more than a few minutes.  They know they've got it good.

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No, Really, it's for the Neighborhood Kids

After the big storm, our snow-o-meter got to:

It compressed quickly.  Technically it was a good inch above that when we first woke up on Friday, but an hour later it had compressed an entire inch, and that's when we took the photo.

It was enough snow that the dogs were completely overwhelmed by it.  At one point Lucy accidentally stepped off the area we had packed down for them and floomp!  She disappeared up to her panicked little eyeballs.  Watching the hounds move through that much snow is hilarious.  They have to bound like bunnies, and all but their ears disappear with each bound.

That was some of the heaviest, wettest snow I've ever had the misfortune to shovel.  Thankfully, on Friday morning, the neighbor I think of as "Mr. Grouchy" snow blowed much of the driveway for us.  I guess I have to stop thinking of him as Mr. Grouchy, huh?  He never cracked a smile, never even acknowledged us with so much as a nod, just silently and frowningly blowed out the driveway.  I'm grateful, with or without pleasantries.  We would have been absurdly late for work if we had had to shovel it all, and would possibly have done permanent damage to our spines.

Come today, Sunday, my husband and I started to work through the day's to-do list - various errands, cooking, cleaning the house...  Sometime early afternoon we scrapped it all and went to go outside and play in the snow instead.

We built a snow fort.  For the neighborhood kids, of course.  Yeah.  That's it.

The snow was so sticky that it was incredibly easy to build with.  It helped that we built it in the back yard along the narrow street that runs behind our house.  With a street that narrow there's nowhere to put the snow but up, so the snow bank was very high to begin with.  The walls are maybe 4-5 feet high from the inside, and from the outside along the street they were much higher.

I'm guessing our window arch might last a day, if we're lucky, given how fast things are melting.  None of the fort would withstand much of a snowball assault.  It lacks fine details, and is quite lumpy.  But it does have a window, peep holes, and stairways.  And to a creative imagination, the tree stump inside is a lovely table.  Dang, was it fun to build rather than doing all the things we were supposed to do!

Now to thaw out my extremities, and finish some of that laundry...

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Snow, finally

I've been lamenting for weeks that if it's going to be winter, it ought to really be winter.  Hooray for me, today is finally a proper Central New York winter day!  Too bad it was a work day.  Oh, how I miss snow days.

When we left the house this morning our sophisticated snow-o-meter read:

By the time I got home it read:

Meh.  At least it's something.  The roads on the way home were, as my husband so eloquently put it, "slicker than snot on a doorknob."  I like being able to properly utilize my snow tires.

It's still snowing like crazy, and that makes me happy.  The forecast is for a total of 12" to 15" of snow.  While that's admirable, even if we got that much it's still not enough for me.  I'd prefer a good old-fashioned whallop, like the blizzard of '93.

That, incidentally, was the year that I did the exchange in York, England, and by the time the March blizzard hit, the girl I exchanged with was at our house in Central New York.  She thought 43" of snow in 48 hours was pretty fun, especially since she'd only ever experienced a few inches at a time, and that rarely.  York doesn't get that much snow any more.  Here she is, in the incredible snow fort we built in my parents' front yard: 

There was a tunnel that stretched probably a good 6 feet through the snow, and at the end of it we built an igloo snow fort.  It was great fun, although the very thought of crawling through that tunnel now makes my pulse quicken and my chest tighten.  Sometime between then and now I've developed a mild case of claustrophobia.

My best friend also got snowed in at our house at the beginning of that storm, and it was a thrill to have the whole City of Syracuse shut down.  For a couple of days only emergency vehicles were allowed on the roads.  Do you know what that would mean for me now?  A snow day.  I'd kill for a snow day.  My office never, ever closes, but I figure "emergency vehicles only" would actually do it.  Too bad 15" of snow is patently insufficient to achieve "emergency vehicle only" status in snowy Syracuse.

In other fun storm memories, how about the 1998 ice storm?  The storm bypassed Central New York, but I was in college in Maine at the time, and most certainly experienced it in all its wrath.  When I called my parents on the second day of the storm, they couldn't believe the stories I told about the ice.  Syracuse just got rain, and apparently my parents hadn't been watching the news.

I don't recall how much ice there was, but these photos give you some idea.  Here's a good friend of mine trying to chisel out her vehicle.

She's definitely going to kill me for posting that photo of her talking, but it's the only photo I have showing the ice accumulation.  In the background you can see the trees bent double under the weight of the ice.  And to the left you can make out the thickness of the ice on her truck bed.  Now THAT was some ice!

That storm was really rather tragic as such things go, as there were something like 30 fatalities.  There were a lot of farm animal fatalities, too, because farmers could not get adequate water and ventilation to their livestock, and quite a number of barns also collapsed on animals.  The damage to power infrastructure in the affected areas was staggering, and some people were without power for nearly a month.

In Maine, my college was well equipped to handle power outages.  We were also right near one of the more major metropolitan areas (for Maine), so we got our power back quickly.  Friends, neighbors, and faculty weren't all so lucky.  I was actually off campus when the storm hit and couldn't get back to campus for a day or two.  The roads were impassable from so much ice and so many downed trees and power lines.  For days afterward, once I finally got back to campus, all day long I could hear the incessant sound of people trying to hack through the ice encasing their cars.  Lots of people broke windshields, mirrors and windows by hacking too hard at them.

After graduation, I worked in Northern New York for a few years, which also got hit by the ice.  I distinctly recall driving up Route 81 and along Route 11 and noticing the spiky appearance of the landscape.  So many trees had snapped off under the weight of all that ice that the North Country looked strangely pointy for a number of years afterward.

I wonder, how would we fare in a major storm at our house?  If we lost electricity, we'd still have the wood stove for heat, although without being able to run the fan on it we wouldn't be able to keep more than one room really warm.  Otherwise we would just lose the lights and the fridge - everything else should continue to work.  A small generator to run the fan on the wood stove and the fridge would be ideal, but they're so expensive we haven't invested in one yet.  But how much fun would it be to camp out - us two and our 5 fuzzy friends - in front of the fire for a few days?  Sounds like a grand adventure to me.

I shall have to wait for a different storm, however.  This one's just a little bit of snow fun, not one for the history books - at least not in Central New York.

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Ruins, Yet Again

After driving about for quite some time, wandering different bits of the trail and getting a little bit lost, my husband and I finally found what we had set out to discover.  The Cayuga County Trail was once a railroad track that has now been converted into a trail.  It's hard to say precisely what these buildings would have been used for because there's a shocking amount of garbage that has been shoved in them over the years. Most of the larger rusting bits looked like farm equipment, so my best guess is these were used for storing and loading grain and other farm goods.

Regardless of their history, they are decidedly picturesque in fading February evening light.

It's hard to believe some of these are still standing at all.  I was afraid to sneeze for fear I'd blow them over.  I pity the poor squirrel or bat whose weight finally does in the one above.  It gave me a little more hope that my lovely old house with its slightly leaning basement wall has a long time before I need to panic about it.  And our barn, which is rapidly beginning to look like some of these, could stand for decades yet.  At least our barn still has 4 walls and a roof, although the angles at which said walls and roof meet up are becoming more peculiar with each passing year.

These wonderful old barns were hauntingly still and quiet while we snapped their pictures.  No creatures stirred, and for the first time all day the wind dwindled to nothing.  It was as though time was temporarily frozen.

I love the textures of the old wood as it slowly rots, and the remaining hints of the red paint that used to grace the boards.  I wonder why red is the universal color for barns?  It's sometimes amazing to me that neglect and decay can be beautiful.

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