Meet Beth

I've been keeping pretty busy recently. One of my recent projects is (once again--yawn!) to put some effort into developing some healthier, more balanced habits. Like eating more healthy food--but gosh it's so convenient to hit a restaurant.

Anyway, I've also been trying to clean up this place of late. Being a freelancer, I'm finally spending quite a lot of time here at home, and I've finally looked around and gone, "Criminey, I need to clean up this place!"

But I do have something to share with you. In this case--if you are woodchuck-phobic, don't look any further, or you'll be offended.

Yes, I do know that they burrow like crazy and have a tendency to breed like, um, rodents, and that they love to eat up one's vegetable garden. Let me try to explain.

Here's how it started. See, we put feed out for the birds. That's okay, it's normal. But the squirrels tend to hog up the feeders. So to keep the squirrels away from the bird feeders, we've been pouring a little bit of field corn out under the walnut, well away from the bird zone.

To be funny, we put the corn in an old wooden bird feeder that was falling apart. It looked like a little house. You have to admit it's cute.

Anyway, a woodchuck or two have located this cornucopia of corn, so they've learned to visit the squirrel feeder.

Which is to say: We didn't invite the woodchuck(s). They appeared on their own. And so now we're "subsidizing" two types of mammals in order to get them to leave the bird feeders alone. It's like a payoff, or a bribe.

No, we're not going to shoot "Beth" (we call the woodchucks "Beth," short for "Beth DeWoody," a memorable character from a favorite episode of AbFab--long story). But I'm not keen on them getting any ideas about burrowing under our sunporch.

So far, the bribes are working. And we're enjoying watching our chubby little cornfed pals.

It's cute how they get along with the squirrels . . .