Terry Cowgill

Cardinal Sin

Someone help me, please. I’ve got a minor problem.

For about four years now, a male cardinal (hard to tell if it’s the same one) lights in a lilac bush near a first floor window of my house. Then the dopey bird looks over at the window and dive bombs it repeatedly.

Happens once a month or more. No kidding. He flies 3 or 4 feet and crashes right into one of the panes. He does this 15-20 times before giving up and going — where? — to another house and doing the same thing?

He started out a few years ago crashing into a garage window facing south. Recently he has settled on a living room window facing west (see photo above). A deranged bird with a death wish? It had occurred to me and my son that perhaps the cardinal could see his reflection in the window and assumed it was an intruder, and so attacked (repeatedly and unsuccessfully).

Anyone ever heard of this before? Short of covering up my beautiful Pella windows, what can I do? Will repeated smackings damage the window or hurt the bird?

A Pretty Pest

Caught this fellow on film over the weekend hammering away at a dying pine tree in my backyard. Everyone in my house has been sick for days, so it took a tremendous burst of energy for me to stir from the couch just to see him — to say nothing of actually taking out the camera and working it from my porch.

My son tells me it’s a male downy woodpecker, but it looked a little large and lacking spots on his wings to be a downy. Perhaps it was the related hairy woodpecker, which also has the red spot on its head. At any rate, this was one of the trees that suffered extensive damage in the Dec. 1 storm. It had already been weakened by the carpenter ants that had begun to hollow it out.

If this bird gets his way, the tree will become his home. Then when I have to take it down, he’ll have to find a new abode — just like so many spotted owls in Oregon. Will that get me in trouble with the DEP?

CT ’Coons — Deja Vu All Over Again

For those who recall my story on the attack of the crazed raccoon in Lime Rock last April, here is another one about an attack Monday in Enfield.

The link to my story on tcextra.com has expired so I have pasted my story into the first comment space on this post (in case you missed it the first time or want to refresh your memory).

While the Enfield raccoon story is frightening, I think it pales in comparison to harrowing the trevails of Rebecca Mahony and John Belter. The Journal Inquirer piece is an interesting read nonetheless …

Midnight Baseball: Lacrosse With A Bat

Last month it was the tiniest of critters invading my home. Just the other night it was something considerably larger. But first, a little background. The power went out a couple of times in the last few days. Those in the Lakeville-Salisbury area know what I am talking about.

A storm came through early Saturday evening, breaking a large tree branch near the back entrance to the Wake Robin Inn on Wells Hill Road. The power finally came back on at 2 a.m. And that’s the good news. On Monday a rogue thunderstorm rumbled through the area and toppled a number of trees including two which fell across Woodland Drive, downing power lines and trapping residents in the 20 or so homes in that development. But it also cut power once again to my home, this time on what was surely the hottest night of the year.

Continue reading Midnight Baseball: Lacrosse With A Bat…

Invasion of the Exponential Ants

It’s a little reminiscent of a sci-fi film. I woke up at 6 a.m. last week, bleary-eyed as always, poured my coffee and sat down in my study to check my email and watch a little Imus in the Morning. I noticed one or two carpenter ants on the floor, got up and killed them and didn’t think much of it.

Then about five minutes later they started coming out of the woodwork — literally. In about 15 minutes there were dozens of them not only in the study, but in the adjacent section of my kitchen. Yikes, I thought, I must do something, but what?

I got into my car and went straight down Wells Hill to Herrington’s, which is where I go whenever I have a problem, even at 7 a.m. I rummaged around the pest control section and came back to the counter with a couple of packages of baited “ant motels.”

Continue reading Invasion of the Exponential Ants…