We're off to see the wizard...

Nic and I are nervous travelers. It gets worse the more we do it, as if repeated exposure to airport lounges and bored security guards only fuels our imaginations of endless variations on potential travel disasters. Having our flights booked on Thanksgiving has not improved the situation, as the prospect of finding a new seat is near impossible if delay or mishap results in a missed connection. Consequently, we both awoke at 5am, were fully packed, the house cleaned, notes written for house sitters, breakfast demolished, and now we are sitting around in agitation with 35 minutes before we get picked up.

Its a beautiful morning. Outside the front windows the grass is silvery with frost. The winter garden - what is left of a bountiful and exuberant summer - is limp and bent like a Russian peasant against the cold. But the sky is very clear and blue, the early morning light full of pinks and golds, and squirrels and cardinals are hanging out on the front lawn as if it were a midwinters ball - the male cardinals in their bright red suits, the women in drab brown and both sporting their black face patch like a Venetian domino. They flap and flutter between the ground the bare branches of the pomegranate bush with no obvious purpose that I can discern.

The squirrels are too intent on nut retrieval and burial operations for any of this frivolity. They are looking fat and glossy (although they are positively slender compared to their obese relatives that I just saw in Montreal, squirrels so padded against the winter cold that they were the size of a rabbit, and even their arms had obvious fat rolls). This year has been a corker for pecans in North Carolina. Our neighbour's trees have lost their leaves and a crown of spiky black nut cases now makes a pretty silhouette. The ground is rough with the fallen nuts - I can find them by walking and catching them beneath my feet - or by spotting the prettily striated black and brown nut lying smooth and inconspicuous under the leaves.
The squirrels are world class nut finders. Without hesitation they scamper to the neighbour's lawn, pick a nut and race back to our lawn, where the freshly weeded veggie beds offer the perfect combination of loose soil and surreptitious brilliance that a squirrel looks for in a nut-hiding-spot. With powerful little arms and a facial expression somewhere between mania and utter unctuousness they dig out a hole, drop the nut and then smooth the earth back over it, before glancing around a few times (to ensure their secret remains safe) and dashing back to Alice's lawn for the next treasure to bury. When another squirrel comes too close dramatic chase and fight scenes ensue. The bushes, the telephone wires and house roofs are all employed as a fighting arena. Its like a kung fu movie - they race up a telephone pole, circling it in spirals and boxing at each other when the spirals intersect. Then they zoom across a telephone wire, leap onto the next roof, and sort each other out. Eventually the victor returns, no time to look pleased, nuts to be buried!

In the mountains last summer we observed one of these ravenous scallywags trying to get into a bird feeder. It seems like a never ending battle is waged in the US by bird lovers determined to feed the winged things while keeping the squirrels out of the grain. You can buy any number of ingenious squirrel proofed bird feeders. None of them work. The contraption in the mountains consisted of a regular feeder - but suspended over a 10m drop by a 2m wire. This wasn't enough to stop the squirrels from trying, although it did make things susbtantially harder for them. First they would approach from the top and abseil down the wire to perch precariously on the feeder. But the food was at the bottom - another foot of slippery, hard to negotiate plastic away. And below them, the drop.
Watching a squirrel negotiate this last obstacle was nail biting. Their claws didn't grip the plastic well so they would slide helterskelter down the tube, trying to grab at the bird perch right at the bottom. Regularly they'd miss with their front paws and only save themselves by a quick "back paw arrest". And, finally, one fell.
I gasped. I may have screamed a little. Nic and I watched open mouthed. "Should we resuscitate it? Will there be anything to resuscitate?" we wondered. But, unperturbed, the little guy picked himself off the bricks that he'd just slammed into (and lets be honest, this fall would have shattered all of my bones, let alone a little furry guy's) and scooted back up the verandah to take 2.

Well, now there are only 15 minutes until we scoot to the airport. Take care one and all and hope to see you soon...!

XOXO

Sal