By Peppermint Patti
JOTR Columnist
I’ll tell you about my summer from hell later, Sophie. Right now, I want to know what in the world happened to all the bush-tails?
When we left this place, there was a spring crop of shavetail bush-butts waiting to be chased back up the trees.
The lawn was rampant with ignorant, impudent brush-tushes.
A dog can’t go away for a minute without some calamity happening to the wild game population.
I tell you, Sophie, I’m back what — this is my third day — and not a single brownback to be chased.
What gives?
Way up there, high in the sugar maple, I see one, no, I see two — wow! three!! — little bush-tails romping in the branches. I keep thinking one of the brainless little dimwits will slip and fall, but no. They frolic away forty feet up and never a sign of coming to ground.
Something else a little weird, Sophie. Now that I notice. Where are all the birds?
My male two-legger can’t get enough of the little ones that fly backwards. They sound like a power transformer about to catch fire. He’s put out four or five sugar-water offerings and the breezy little guys with their scarlet ties are catching on.
Between you and me, Sophie, I don’t consider those hum-bums real birds.
But that begs the question — where ARE the real birds?
Know what I think, Sophie?
No matter how much sugar-water he puts out, it won’t bring in the TRUE, straight-flying birds.
And if he won’t feed the big birds, the bush-tails won’t come down.
If the bush-tails won’t come down where I can get ’em, what’s a high-spirited pup gonna do?
The perfect bird feeder is one that dumps two seeds on the ground for every one it gives the birds.
Get it, Sophie?
“Feed the birds, bait the squirrels.”
Glad to see Patti back.
She’s so photogenic; wish I took half as good a photo — but no; the Security people use my passport photo to torture info out of suspected terrorists.
I think Patti’s squirrels don’t run around much in the very hot weather; after all, would you like to carry around a heavy brush of a tail in 95-degree sunshine? They’ll be back as soon as we get some real autumn weather:
When loud the bumble-bee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And Golden-Rod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;
When Gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;
(From Helen Hunt Jackson’s “October’s Bright Blue Weather’)