As you may have guessed by now, my partner and I aren't your normal everyday gay couple... we lack the ... hmm how to put this... refinement necessary to run in the other direction when wild animals show up at our back door!
I grew up in NB and for the most part, think of wild animals as wonderful additions to the forest area but had not related to them as anything more than a possible road bump to avoid.. okay.. I've not been a great animal activist in my past.
Darrin on the other hand, can have his day go to hell in a hand basket with a bird dive bombing his car in a suicide act reminiscent to the Japanese fighter pilots of old movies... only in this case, they are much smaller and are of the red breasted species!
Together we rival the Sigfried and Roy status in our little world of South Melville. It started with me making friends with the birds at the feeders and then making a bet with Darrin that I could have them feeding out of my hand if I wanted.. it went rapidly downhill from there! The birds were easy, the squirrels were more difficult but then.. Oh My Gawd.. the raccoons were beyond easy to have hand trained. I felt like we were in a smaller version of some Disney reality show where others saw what was happening, but we were oblivious to the events surrounding us.
Needless to say, Darrin's love of animal life and my desire to control things have ended us up in hot water. We have named all of the squirrels Sherylie because... well.. you really can't tell them apart. The humming birds have names, but, and make a note of this.. all four of the raccoons have specific names. There was Scrapper, Miss Pittypat and one more who's name escapes me at the moment, whom Darrin named when they stared showing up in early March.
Not to be outdone, I wanted to name one so the next new addition I got to name and the only thing I could come up with was TammyFaye because of the darkness around the eyes.. sad .. but that was my best. In the end, all of the raccoons have ventured away over the last few months and we're left with TammyFaye showing up at least once a night. She is the BEST FED animal in our neck of the woods and yes, we do know you shouldn't feed the wildlife.
TammyFaye is no longer 'wildlife' as it's defined in Webster's Dictionary. TammyFaye is a Disney version of wildlife. She has her own dish, a special menu of dry cat food, peanuts, dog treats, trail mix, and at times Ritz cheese and crackers. We've justified feeding her now because she's obviously a mother of several kits based on the sagginess. The girl just needs to take care of herself.. she'll never get her girlish figure back.
So, TammyFaye comes when you whistle for her and she'll sit up on her bench.. yes.. she has a bench for her food. You don't expect her to sit on the ground like the common animals do you?
Once August hits we'll start cutting back on the food in the dish, but I doubt it because that's when I suspect she'll bring along the irresistible babies for us to go ga-ga over. It's inevitable and we all know it.
For now, this is fine with me. It keeps us from wanting to replace the dogs in our lives we lost, both over the last year. Our misfortune will be TammyFaye's good fortune. At least until the fall when we move back into town and she goes into her winter sleep.
