and squirrel diabetes and cannibal birds. this is going to be a long story…

we started a compost bin last year and darla received a bird feeder for christmas and since then our backyard has been a veritable menagerie of wildlife. since all these animals have been freeloading off of us, somewhere along the line i just started chucking food out the back door and letting them have at it.

our neighbors came over to have breakfast once and i think they noticed me throwing bread crust and crackers out into the yard soon thereafter because they began to distance themselves.

i know what you are thinking of me but i just can’t stop doing it now. they expect it of me. i’m serious. if we get up late and i haven’t thrown darla’s leftover bread crust out the back door by 9 am squirrels are sitting on our back porch railing giving me stink eye through the back window and birds are in every branch of our tree. i am not even joking.

and it’s not just bread crust. i actually drain off our bacon fat and make it into little cakes with birdseed in it to put out for them. there are 2 in our freezer right now that i’m just waiting for the right moment to surprise them with. the squirrels have gotten so fat that i’m quite sure they have diabetes. SQUIRREL DIABEETUS.

and then there’s the bird cannibals.

darla eats eggs practically every morning but she won’t eat the yolk.  i keep telling myself that “one day she’ll grow to like the yolk” instead of just buying the egg whites. this means that every day, every damn day, i am tossing yolks out the back door. the squirrels won’t touch ’em but the birds go crazy for them. they have little bird wars. well, i guess there would be a little philosophical debate about whether or not the term cannibal applies because then we’re getting into the whole “potential life” thing. but my point is they’re really mean to each other about it.

i have turned birds, a symbol of peace, into savages.

the worst revelation is yet to come…

all the snow from this winter made it possible to track all the little critters that come through the yard during non-human hours. i have spotted opossum tracks in our backyard and my hypothesis is he/she (please don’t let it have been a momma-she) is visiting our compost bin. i know for a fact that opossums like compost bins.

when i was young it was my job to take the compost out to the bin and one summer evening i was startled by a young opossum taking a snooze in our bin. opossums do not play dead when they are startled. they spring to life quickly and stare at you with glow-red eyes and i think they breathe in a little bit of your life essence like the witches in hocus pocus because I was so traumatized by that baby opossum that i refused my duties for some time.

well, that opossum lay dead the other morning in the alley directly behind our house. i am quite certain it was hit whilst either coming or going to our composter. i hope it was at least post meal for ya, little buddy.

i don’t know what else to say about this situation. i feel it might be getting a little out of hand. do you think i’m an animal hoarder? do i need to go check out a self-help book? should i put the kibosh on our feeder? should i walk the bread crust all the way out to the composter instead of lazily hurling it out the backdoor?

no. no. i probably won’t do any of that.  but i do think i’ll stop making those bacon grease squirrel cakes. that’s a good compromise.

^^^see?^^^