He stopped being the top jay, but still came by every day to check out the cat dish — but the hawks couldn’t get him, because without tailfeathers he bobbed up and down too much.

Here in upstate New York, if you don’t have a house pet, the squirrels and mice move in. We still get the occasional mouse who manages to dodge the cats all winter — but then they go and die behind the cabinets on you, phew!

I’m surprised you don’t have squirrels living under your house — out old house had a crawlspace underneath, and the squirrels always thought that was theirs.

The other bearable thing about my mice is that they don’t live in the cabin, as such—there’s too much interesting stuff going on outside, in summer at least. They just…visit. At four am. Loudly.

We had a storm and the phone went out, so the lady who’s house I was taking care of suggested I fix it. I walked down the hill until I found this place where there was a break in the line (it was a connection spot on the wire, where a falling branch had pulled the connection apart). So I twisted the connection back together, tie a knot in the wire to keep the tension off the connection, and tie the wire to a new branch.

I think I vote for cats and dogs — keep the mice on the ball. It’s not like there’s nothing else hunting mice, why not a friend of yours? And it does give the mice some reason to find somewhere else to nibble on the snacks.

I’ve become an animal-lover late in life, to my surprise, but when it comes to house pets I side with the distrust of Edward Abbey and David Quammen. (Though not to the extent of suggesting all domestic dogs be ground up for supplemental coyote-feed, as Abbey does…)

Other people’s cats and dogs are all lovely, though, of course.

Best,
I.