Treeeeeeeeeees

We've successfully managed to attract a couple of Crows, who regularly come and hang out in the yard. I put a large dish on the ground and fill it with corn and sunflower seeds, and recently, hot pepper-laced suet. The squirrels will eat the easy food I'm offering, minus the spicy suet, and they generally stay out of the bird feeders. The Crows have discovered the suet, so they like to show up early and fly off with as much of it stuffed into their throat pouches as they can manage. Typically, one distracts the territorial male squirrels while the other Crow tanks up.

I normally also have deer visiting the dish, but I haven't seen many deer this winter and spring. A few days ago I found out (maybe) why.

Our net was out for a long, looonnnnng time because Florida Power & Light was working around Waldo, and sliced through a fiber optic line. Good job, you fuckin dingdongs. So Fox and I went riding around and ended up in Belmore State Forest. Part of this was running recon - we're going to try an ultramarathon and we're going to need a lot of trail to run. Since we live next to a State Forest with decent roads and trails, this is an easy one for us. It'll also be nice to run somewhere with no cars and no dogs. Maybe a bear.

Driving around some of the better roads, we came across areas that had obviously been burned off recently. Back in the late fall, I was reading one afternoon and noticed it kept getting darker and darker ... at two pm? It was a massive smoke plume from a controlled burn - probably the one we drive past. Burning that area off meant there was a lot of new growth, so the deer probably have no reason to seek out food closer to human dwellings.

I've also seen gray fox tracks in the mud recently, and spotted one trotting around on the security cameras early one morning. Haven't seen the little fuzzball in person, though.