The week between Christmas and New Years may be a festive period, but the garbage bin still needs to be wheeled out to the roadside. We've had recent snow and ice, so I needed reliable traction, and when I put my left foot into a galosh*, I felt something under my sock. Expecting a curled shoelace there, I was surprised to find instead a food stash.
Expecting the items to be seeds from the crabapple tree, I was surprised again when I looked more closely and realized they were kernels of corn -
- and was triply surprised because there are no corn kernels in our birdseed stash (which in any case is kept in a tightly sealed container). The colors of the kernels led me to the source -
- colorful "Indian corn" we had used for years as front door Thanksgiving decorations had been meticulously harvested.
There was no doubt about the identity of the culprit. The unanswered question was - why were they placed in the galosh? We have a typical American suburban garage - that is to say one that it is littered with (first world problem) lots of stuff, including lawn and garden equipment, plants in containers overwintering, cartons of odds and ends that can tolerate low temps in the winter. Lots of nooks and crannies. So why did Mrs. mus musculus choose to traverse the floor, climb (probably along the zipper) of my galosh and drop the corn kernels there?
Factoring in the number of kernels missing from the cobs I have to assume there are other stashes elsewhere in the garage, probably not to be found by me until springtime. So I can only conclude that the placing of corn in the galosh is not storage for her, but is a gift to me in the traditional European fashion of the Custom of the Shoes. She apparently is deeply appreciative of our providing her with a non-freezing garage as a "shelter from the storm." And she is offering me the corn perhaps not for my consumption, but rather as a not-too-subtle hint to "plant more of these please."
And so the year comes to an end on a pleasant note.
* had to look it up. Perhaps the first and last time in my life I will ever use the singular form (from Middle English galoche, from Old French galoche (“shoe with a wooden sole”).
I had some suet cakes spiked with hot pepper stored in the garage, assuming they’d be safe from the mice who hang out there. It was not to be. I found one that had been torn open with about 1/3 of it gone and the unmistakable mousey calling cards scattered about. Now I’m wondering if I should put some Tums tablets out there.
ReplyDelete?is the suet spiked with hot pepper designed to deter squirrels from eating at the bird feeder?
DeleteYes. It works with squirrels so I assumed mice would be deterred too. I think the problem was that it was when we had about 8 inches of snow on the ground. They probably figured it was preferable to going outside.
DeleteWe had the mice hiding them in her ice skates that I had hanging which was a good five or 6 feet away from where the Indian corn was being stored. They wanted to give you a happy New Year's present
ReplyDeleteSo...remember how the white man bought Manhattan with a handful of beads? This is mice buying your garage with a handful of corn.
ReplyDeleteI found banana chips hidden in a shoe that was next to the bag that had the banana chips.
ReplyDeleteI think there's probably a far simpler answer. Ghosts, obviously.
ReplyDelete