Gratitude Monday: Neighborliness

A couple of weeks ago, I looked up from writing a bug ticket because a female mallard duck was peering in to my living room. Ducks tend to be like nuns—they travel in pairs—so I slowly turned my head and, yes indeed, there was her partner. I carefully got my phone and managed to capture this video:

The next morning I saw the back end of the female as she was disappearing down the slope, and then—maybe an hour later—a flash of something at the edge of the patio caught my peripheral vision. I assumed it was the butterscotch tabby that used to stop by now and again, but it turned around and I realized it was a fox.

Well, this is a first.

Okay—the ducks are a first, too. Never seen them anywhere except the ponds over at the corporate headquarters behind my cluster. I managed to toss out some bird food—grains and nuts—which they seemed to enjoy. But, except for the next-day visit, I’ve not seen them since.

However, Foxy has been by every day. But the clever clogs always manages to do it when I can’t get to my phone without scaring him (on the first visit, he stood at exactly the same spot where Madame Canard had been when looking over the living room décor, which is to say: about eight feet from where I was sitting), or at the exact moment when I was talking on a meeting call, or when the phone was charging across the room.

Also, he doesn’t stick around.

Friday, I tossed out the baking paper for an orange-cranberry muffin that I had for breakfast, thinking the birds might like the crumbs.

But blow me, if foxy didn’t swoop by and grab it in his slender little maw. Naturally, that was while I was chatting with a colleague, and I’m afraid that the latter pretty much got dumped for 93 seconds while I tried to get footage of Foxy, but it was crap. Also—I missed the owl that lives nearby, and which seemed to have had words with Foxy about whose turf this is. So disappointing.

But yesterday—triumph! I’d saved the skin from the salmon filet I had for dinner on Saturday, and tossed it out at around 0830 as fox bait. If I could have hooked up a fan to blow across the skin to spread the scent, I’d have done that. But—about 20 minutes later—M. Reynard appeared and snapped it up. I almost missed getting pix, because he’s a snatch and run kind of guy, but someone was out walking a dog on the path behind me, so he stayed in the ivy and ate his breakfast. Viz:

Then he came back to the patio to see if there might be anything else of interest.

So this is my gratitude today: neighbors dropping by to borrow a cup of breakfast and sharing my patio.

Though not at the same time, of course. That would not end well.