Rounded diet

Okay, I confess—I frequently toss bits of food that may be unappetizing to me out on the patio; almost every time, it’s gone by the next morning.

I’m talking crusts of Gruyere or Romano or really old scraps of mozzarella and the ricotta at the bottom of the little carton that’s gone kind of pinkish. Birds and squirrels ignore them, but someone must like them because they disappear overnight. (And, yes—the little plastic tubs are gone, so whoever it is takes them away to clean out at leisure. I keep picturing some little den with eight or ten Wegman’s ricotta containers, like family heirloom China.)

Same goes for cupcake papers—I fling them out at dusk and they’re gone by dawn. And salmon skins. And the occasional lamb chop bone. (I don’t put out chicken bones, because I don’t want to be responsible for someone getting throat or mouth splinters.)

For the longest time, I didn’t know who was dining Chez Bas Bleu; as you know, I’ve been visited by a skunk, a fox, racoons and an opossum (no pix/vid). Whoever it was, was bold and fast—some evenings I’d chuck out the bone, skin, cheese or paper and ten or 15 minutes later it would be gone, notwithstanding the fact that I’d been sitting in the lighted livingroom not six feet from the patio door. My money was on the trash pandas, but turns out I’d have lost that money. Because one night I heard a fox’s cry nearby, turned on the outside light and discovered Foxy chowing down on the lamb chop bone.

(The next night—and I swear I am not making this up—I heard that cry around midnight, right outside my window, waking me up; I told him, “Dude—this is not the International House of Lamb Chop Bones. You’re not getting them every night.”)

Well, since then, I’ve occasionally seen him making the rounds in the afternoon, having a sniff and passing through. The cheese rinds, salmon skins, ricotta cartons and cupcake papers continue to disappear, but I don’t see him in the act.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I’d tossed out some Fine Tunes bird seed just before I sat down to my own dinner, and blow me if Foxy didn’t come round and start Hoovering up the seed.

No way, you say?

Way.

Because I have video.

There is nothing on that patio but bird seed.

We are living in strange times, folks. Strange times.