Saturday, January 10, 2009

Nothing to Grouse About

You'd think that when my mountain ash, which has been suffering at the hands (beaks?) of woodpeckers and bugs for the last ten years, is attacked by a marauding grouse, I would be upset.

Right?

Well, not when he looks so innocent:


Don't let this handsome fellow fool you, though.  He's on a mission, and it's serious.

It's a raid!

The last thing this tree needs is to have those juicy, tasty leaf buds taken in the middle of Winter:


When I confronted him about it, this grouse didn't have much to say.  He's excellent under pressure, well trained by whatever spy agency sent him into our country.  He just sat there, challenging me with his cold, hard stare until I had to back down.


Makes me appreciate how trivial my daily struggle with certain complex software systems really is, in the big picture.

3 comments:

Ed Merks said...

My fisher problem---eating all the koi and frogs---took care of itself when it was accidentally electrocuted. The forecast high for the end of the coming week here north of Toronto is -19 with a low of -26. We can only hope that your grouse will freeze its assets right off.

Christian W. Damus said...

Ouch! Electrocuted ... that's pretty grim. I'm not planning anything so violent for the grouse. The strategy for now is to feed them high-energy seed and junk (we have several grouse). We'll see how it goes ...

Chris Aniszczyk (zx) said...

I want to leave a funny quip about living in Texas and guns but I just don't have it in me today ;)

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