Critters & Creatures
Just to be clear: in the pictures above, that feather is not from that bird. That’s a turkey feather and the bird shown is definitely not a turkey. It’s a gray jay. Well. Technically it’s a Canada jay. That’s the official name. But we still call them gray jays here at EM. After a quick online search I learned that the bird above was originally called a Canada jay. In 1957 The American Ornithologists Union changed the name to gray jay, for some/whatever reason. And then they voted to change it back to Canada jay in 2018, for some/whatever reason. I don’t reckon the bird cares one way or the other.
With the weather, light, temperatures, and season changing, the activity of the animals is changing too. Just as when living in a town or city people surrounding you can either be a delight or a drain, uplifting or irritating, so too when living in the woods can the critters & creatures around be a joy or a pain.
The joy producing ones for us are turkeys, gray jays, ravens, and owls. And, well, all birds. I could’ve just said birds, but I wanted to be a little more specific and mention our personal faves that we have here in our neck of the woods. Other joy producing ones for us that we share the land with here at EM include deer, butterflies, coyote, wolves, elk, moose, black bear, and bobcat (we’ve only seen tracks). And while it raises our defenses a bit, as it should, we also enjoy seeing rattlesnakes, which we do have around.
But, of course, we don’t live in a magical wood where all the critters are idyllic and filled with good qualities that uplift us. We also share the woods with a lot of other types of creatures that range anywhere from unpreferred to abhorrent. Just like the rest of humankind, we are not fans of carpenter ants and ticks. Fortunately the season where both are out and active is short. We’ve learned that for us it’s important to spray a certain chemical around our cabin in late spring as part of our standard routine to keep the ants at bay. And in early spring we treat our outdoor work clothes with Permethrin, which is incredibly effective at keeping the ticks off of us.
Okay. So. The pictures above all showcase a few of the different things we’ve learned to do to help address some of the pesky activities from the variety of critters & creatures we have in our midst. We have an assortment of small and furry animals that run around. Some during the day and some at night. We have mice, squirrels, voles, and chipmunks, just to name the ones we know about. We also apparently have ermine around, as our last cat (RIP Larch) once brought home a dead one and left it as an offering by our doorstep, as cats like to do.
The top left picture features our creative hand washing sink in what I like to call our inspirational outhouse, based on all of the art & good quotes I have hanging up inside of it. Notice we have sticks poking up out of the brown and green plastic bins. The green bin has fresh water that feeds the water pump & faucet. The brown bin collects the waste water after folks are done washing their hands. We learned fairly quickly after moving here that water is life in a whole new way. If you leave water outside uncovered, critters thirsty for water will climb in and not be able to get out. We have inadvertently and sadly killed a number of small animals based on not properly covering water. But there’s a trick. If you can’t cover the water with a tight fitting lid, you can simply put a stick in it, which helps the critters have a way to climb out.
The top right picture shows our most rustic rain catchment container. We have an old trashcan posted under a back corner eave and we use the water collected in it solely for the use of washing out the loo buckets as part of our humanure composting toilet system. The bigger than necessary thing on top of it has wire mesh to keep the critters out. It’s just what we happened to have around from another project. Because of the depth of the water involved, we needed to find a different creative solution than a stick. So far it’s been working.
The bottom left picture is yet another creative workaround that Mike came up with. This is a bucket I keep close to the front door of our cabin and use often. While I use the lid that came with it to keep it covered, since I use the bucket regularly to put cooking and dish washing waste water into, I don’t like to full snap it on. And that was working well for a while, until it didn’t. One morning I discovered not one but two mice had somehow made their way into the bucket under the lid. The lid was still on top. They managed to slide underneath it and drown. So Mike attached a heavy chunk of wood to the top of the lid. This way I can leave the lid on and it’s weighted down enough so I don’t have to snap it all the way on.
In the bottom right picture, notice the small metal cone shaped thing at the top of the wooden brace holding up our temporary roof over our water cubes. This is a contraption that Mike built that helps to keep the chipmunks from getting up on top of our bird feeder and water perch.
These are just a few of things we’ve learned through trial and error and lived experience to do for pesky critter control.
Notice the frayed top edge of the loo sign and the bottom edge of the donation box sign? Yep. Critters. Turns out they like to “eat” paper products sometimes. My understanding is they don’t actually eat it, but they nibble away at it and carry off the materials to line their dens. It’s clever. Also frustrating. They also like to nibble away at cloth for the same reason. So we need to be careful about what we leave outside and around. Hand towels, the floor mat inside the shower house, the curtains that serve as the door coverings in our two new smaller outhouses, rags, clothes, socks. Everything is at risk of getting chew marks and holes. These critters are crafty. They’re like tiny ninjas. I’ve been surprised many times at the hanging things they’ve been able to reach and snack on.
There’s more I could share on this topic but this feels like enough for now. In part it seems a good idea to wrap this up so I don’t scare anyone away from coming out here to visit!
It may sound like a lot to contend with, but living in the woods, while certainly different then living in a town or city in certain ways, is also really not all that different. Regardless of where or how we’re living, there are ups and downs, pros and cons, benefits and certain things that are a pain in the ass sometimes. And of course tons of people have to deal with mice and rats and ants when living in big cities and smaller towns.
But if we are fortunate enough to have a choice about where to live (and many of us don’t based on poverty or poor health or mobility issues…), there will always be things to contend with that are less than favorable or preferred at times, no matter where we are in the world or in what kind of dwelling we live in. We each make our choices based on different factors and values of importance. Despite the annoyance, bother, and chore the small critters & creatures can sometimes be, we are very happy living how and where we’re living. Personally, I’ll take the nuisance of the bugs and fuzzy rodents to having people live in super close proximity in all directions and the forever sounds of commerce and industry taking place. We’re not looking to escape from the world or from people, but we are interested and invested in living a different way of life. And sometimes that different way of life includes figuring out how to live side-by-side with unpleasant ground critters & other small creatures.
And speaking of small creatures. Here is a picture I took yesterday of our two sweetest ones:
