By Alkali Springs Correspondent
Another week has passed us by and another Thanksgiving. Out at the cabin we are marveling that we can still get out there as winters that start as this one has, often lay enough drifted snow on our road that we cannot get there for a couple of months at a time. However, that has not happened yet.
Our mother and Vic were over here for Thanksgiving and we had our Thanksgiving turkey in a new dining room added to the cabin just this summer. We really lucked out in that department for two reasons. Often enough when they come over to have Thanksgiving in the beautiful Bear Paws, it is so snowy that they cannot get near the place and we end up having a Havre Thanksgiving. Now, there is nothing wrong with that except that we had our hearts set on a Bear Paw holiday. The other bit of luck we had was that it was fairly warm so we could heat our new dining room very well. That room was built as a sort of summer dining room and lounge and while it soars to a great height, so does the heat. Anyway, everything was working beautifully. We ate turkey, counted our blessings and gave thanks that we were together in such a blessed place.
In the bird department, Mother and Vic were telling us that we must have the grand daddy of all Jays at our feeder each and every day. They say that bird is huge, compared to their Lakeside, Montana jays. As for us, we are just plumb thrilled to have a jay visit us each day. That is a Bear Paw first around our camp.
And along with the jay, we have lots and lots of chickadees and woodpeckers. Colorful spot is our feeder these days.
Not only that but we have a raccoon and a relationship brewing. It all started when we started putting sunflower seeds on a window box outside of our living room window so we could watch the chickadees close up. A wandering raccoon wandered by and climbed up on the window box and ate all the seeds one night. We heard him out there, got up, turned on lights, banged on the window but nothing would get rid of him. So we brought the dog out, put him on the couch overlooking the window and he just simply stared at the raccoon for a long time. Finally everything got back to normal and we and the dog went back to bed.
Well, gentle readers, mind you that raccoon has come back night after night since and the dog never lets out a bark (which we might add is unheard of for him) creeps out of bed, goes into the living room and watches quietly the raccoon out of the front window. Then he will come back to bed. That is when we usually wake up. . .as he is getting back on the bed. And what is even more strange is that each morning there are more and more raccoon nose prints on the outside of those windows leading us to know that in the middle of the night, the dog and raccoon are having some sort of a midnight rendezvous between the glass in the living room. That is a first at our camp!
