The Incredible Disappearing Trapdoor

On the left, trapdoor to basement open; on the right, trapdoor closed. The black bits on the floor are kid-toy pieces.

Ajax was quite taken aback by the reappearance of that dangerous hole in the floor.

It looks like beautiful knitting weather for the next couple of days: rain, mixed rain and snow, snow but no accumulation expected. Then Wednesday the temperature is supposed to reach the 50s again. The grass could really use one more mowing before we get into real winter, so if it's dry enough, I want to get that done.

I'm trying to take it easy on the Pi shawl. I've started the sixth repeat of what will be nine to twelve at the edge, depending on how the yarn holds out. But my wrists are getting tired from the weight pulling at the knitting needles. I did data-entry work for years, and I don't need the return of the crunchy-gravel sound when I rotate my wrists. But it's hard to put my knitting down when it's so drippy and overcast outside.

I refilled the birdfeeders the other day, and I've been getting mostly chickadees, cardinals, house finches, and white-crowned sparrows. The juncoes are back, but they haven't been hitting the feeder much. So far, I have not seen the squirrels in the yard, which I credit to my alert Dog Patrol.

We had a female yellowthroat landing on the side of the dome the other day, flying off, and landing again. I'm not sure what she was doing, unless she was after bugs under the edge of the shingles.

My husband saw a black squirrel out in the maple trees the other day. The black squirrel is a color phase of the Eastern gray squirrel, and they are common along the Lake Michigan shore, but this is the first time we have seen one on our property.

When we first moved here almost sixteen years ago, I was happy, as a person who feeds birds, to find we had no squirrels on the property. Our property is a little wooded island in the middle of cultivated fields, and at the time I guess it didn't have enough seed-bearing trees to support a squirrel population. Since then, the oaks, walnuts, and butternut trees have matured enough to start bearing, and now we have squirrels.

It's only a matter of time before I see one stuffing itself in the bird feeder. As Bill Adler says in his book, Outwitting Squirrels, "What else have they got to do?" other than figure out how to get into my birdfeeder.