There’s A Hole In My Bucket

The weather has been perfect lately. Not too hot and not too cold–but cool enough that I am comfortable wearing jeans and even a sweatshirt. I love jeans and sweatshirt weather.

We’ve had a very dry year so far but we got a bit of rain a few days ago. Ironically, it rained on the summer solstice, the day with the most hours of sunlight in the year. However, it was so darkly cloudy that it felt as if we were living in a day of twilight. Oh, well. That’s life in Michigan. We have a lot of cloudy days because of the Great Lakes. And at least we had rain. Beginning today, we are supposed to have several days of rain, although the chances of rain keep decreasing everything I look at the weather report. The forecast went from an 80% chance of rain to 40%. I’m mentally encouraging the rain clouds to make it here.

As I wrote in my last post, Theo, our sweet dunderheaded cat, kept climbing the post where the bluebird’s house is. Despite the bluebird parents attacking him from the air and me with the garden house, he refused to surrender so I locked him the garage for a few days. After three–maybe four–days, I saw that there was no activity at the birdhouse. The babies had grown up and flown away. So I let Theo out. He checked out the birdhouse a couple times and then lost interest.

We have a raccoon who visits our feeder every evening. She’s very fat so I think she is either a Mama–or soon will be. It’s rather interesting to see her with her little bandit mask, although most of the time I can only tell that she’s been there in the morning when I find the tray feeder tilted and empty.

I don’t mind too much if the raccoon eats the leftover birdseed since I don’t put out a lot. I did mind when she started drinking the sugar water from the hummingbird feeders. I don’t want to use up all my sugar making more nectar each day. After a couple days of problem-solving thought, I started putting the hummingbird feeders in a large cooler at night, which I keep on the deck. The raccoon has left them alone. But now the raccoon is going after another food source.

We have always kept the wildbird seed in a large plastic trash can with a locking lid. We kept it in the pantry, but every summer we have a problem with little moths. When I saw a couple of them fly out of the seed trash can, I thought, “Ah ha! That’s the food source for the moths!” Either the moths are getting into the cans when I open it to get seed out for the birds or the larvae are coming in the sacks from the store. So I put the seed trash can out on the front porch a couple of weeks ago. With the locking lid, I figured it would be safe from critters. Apparently not.

This morning I found a large hole in the lid of the bird seed can. The critter–which I assume is the greedy raccoon–couldn’t open the locking lid so it started chewing through the lid, making it useless for a seed storage container. EJ can use it for a trash can in the garage. I scooped the seed into empty kitty litter buckets and put them…out of the pantry, off the porch, and in the garage, where I hope they will be safe from critters.

As I scooped the seed into the kitty litter buckets, I found myself humming a cute song that I haven’t thought of in years and years. I used to sing it all the time as a child. It’s called “There’s A Hole In My Bucket.” I actually found it on Youtube. It has a catchy tune and I suspect I will be humming it all day…and if you watch the video, maybe you will too?