Blog / Random thoughts and musings.

Skiing and Squirrels

Kathie and I went skiing Friday for the first time in 9 years. We went with some of Kathie’s co-workers to Liberty Mountain in PA, which was about an hour and a half away. Our last ski trip in 1998 was to Snowshoe, almost 5 hours away, also with some co-workers. We were amazed how quickly it came back to us, kind of like riding a bicycle! We had lots of fun and are going to try to ski a little more regularly in the future rather than waiting another 9 years.

On Saturday we had a bit of a wildlife emergency in the back yard. We have a very large, heavy, metal bird feeder hanging in the yard to feed the birds (and squirrels). Well, somehow it must have rotated over time from the wind, or from squirrels jumping on it, because in the morning it finished unscrewing itself from its hanger and dropped to the ground… landing on a young squirrel who was gathering seed under the feeder! The squirrel wasn’t moving, so Kathie got a box and brought him inside. He was bleeding from the nose, so she cleaned him up, filled the box with newspapers to keep him warm and comfortable, and put the box our on the deck. In a few minutes he started moving a little, and before long had hopped out of the box and was slowly wandering around the deck. Finally he hopped down the stairs and out onto the lawn (still frozen-over with snow/ice). We don’t know his ultimate fate… was he well enough to make it home and recover? Was he an easy target for some other wildlife higher on the food chain? One thing we know is that we haven’t seen him back at the bird feeder… but then if a small restaurant fell on me, I’d probably stop hanging out under floating restaurants for a while too.