Another visitor to the Aerie

We have four or five different cats that come by from time to time to try their luck under the bird feeders. Whether they have ever been successful in capturing a healthy bird, I do not know. I've see one cart off a chipmunk and I'm sure they get lucky with a mouse, vole or shrew from time to time. (Well, maybe "luck" isn't the right word for catching a shrew. When we let our cats outside when we lived in Dover they caught lots of shrews. They just didn't eat them after the first one made them ill. Poison saliva glands will do that to ya I guess. They always left the little buggers on the porch steps...decapitated.)

Anyway, the critter pictured below started to show up the last few days. I'm sure it would dine on any worms or bugs it found in the sunflower hulls but right now it's probably happy with the black oil seeds the birds and squirrels miss.



The first few times it showed up, it was just after dark. Today it was out there in the mid afternoon. I hope that's either because it feels comfortable around the house or because it senses a disturbance in the weather (gonna get real cold for a few days) and not because it is ill. I can do something about the comfort level and I can hope it disappears again when the weather warms up and there's better forage elsewhere, but if it's ill, I may have to resort to the air rifle.

This is one ugly looking critter. Very primeval. It always is a surprise to see how larger their heads are considering how small their brain cavity is. (Yeah, I've found and examined a few skulls of Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana) in the past.

It's probably denned up in one of two or three holes in the woods formerly occupied by ground hogs who have gone to that great hay field in the sky with a little help from Mr. Air Rifle.