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.
