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anneliese_32

Recycling

anneliese_32
12 years ago

We are not the only ones recycling trash. A few years ago a neighbor had a torn pillow on an outdoor chair. Slowly but surely the stuffing disappeared. The next summer I found some it under a couple of the oak trees. I raked it up and put it temporarily in a old flower pot behind the shed and forgot about it. In late fall it had disappeared. The pile is getting smaller, but since that time every year the stuffing shows up in late spring and disappears in fall, upholstering the squirrels winter quarters. They know they find it in the old flowerpot.

Comments (8)

  • Tiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL
    12 years ago

    That is way cool!

  • oscarthecat
    12 years ago

    Hurray for the squirrels. Steve (back) in Baltimore County.

  • meldy_nva
    12 years ago

    At least I can understand stuffing. I have never figured out why a squirrel took all the plant labels (snipped from venetian blind slats) from my garden. A storm the following spring blew down a squirrel nest; scattered amongst the twigs and leaves were a half-dozen labels. I've never seen the rest of them, so I guess they are decorating nest/s inside a tree.

  • west_gardener
    12 years ago

    meldy_,and anneliese at least you've been able to identify the culprits.
    Somebody is attacking my Marigolds. The plants have been there for months unmolested, but in the last week somebody has cut the flowers and pulled out the petals. A first for me.

  • west_gardener
    12 years ago

    Steve, "Hurray for the squirrels". Those are fighting words around here.

  • calliope
    12 years ago

    Our property has always been overrun with chipmunks. It seems that if one has lots of them, then squirrels don't move in and vise versa. Over the course of my life here, we've planted well over a hundred trees and just stopped counting. But many of the plantings we made have nuts or berries for the wildlife and the squirrels are beginning to nest here now.

    And actually, I have found that they do like to collect things other than nest material or foodstuffs. When I was married first, we lived in what amounted to a treehouse over a garage to an apartment building. We often left the windows open in warm weather and one adventuresome rodent began exploring in our tiny flat. Soon all my wooden Kokeshi dolls I collected in Japan began disappearing. We found them, along with some other tiny collectables buried under a large walnut tree in which the squirrel lived. Since the tree was located on the property of the nearby frat house, and most males aren't into tiny dolls.......I doubt it was human theft and that only left one suspect. I also found the loaf of bread I normally left on the counter was often opened and messed up when I came home from work. The squirrel was evidently having lunch during it's stealing sprees.

    My cousin was visiting and thought it would be neat to shut the window when the rodent was inside to get a better peek at it. The squirrel went berserk and all hades broke loose. It was right out of a Ray Stevens song. It was plumb scary and they have very nasty little yellow teeth. LOL. We finally managed to flush it out the window and back to the tree over a little gang-plank and it never came back to visit again.

  • meldy_nva
    12 years ago

    West ~ do you have goldfinches? After losing most of the yellow and red petals in my front yard flower beds (that year they were mostly zinnias and marigolds), I finally noticed the goldfinches were enthusiastically plucking the petals. I now plant a special flowerbed just for them, and the petals disappear almost as fast as the buds open.

  • west_gardener
    12 years ago

    meldy, I don't know if we have Goldfinches. I have to look into that. But it makes sense that it could be a bird, because of the "delicate" way the petals are removed.

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