Tuesday Musings.

Overheard at Council Point Park today: “Those squirrels eat better than I do!”

Hmm. This gentlemen was strolling along the perimeter path. He was not watching me feeding my little buddies, but happened to come along after I had just left some peanuts for a bunch of them. Of course, the squirrels are like Pavlov’s dog sometimes, and, if they see another human with a friendly face, they conclude this person might be packin’ peanuts, so maybe it is worth sidling up to them as they might be a potential benefactor. It doesn’t matter if they are already eating peanuts either …with the squirrels, it is all about working the crowd.

This walker evidently didn’t buy into that idea and repeated his statement again: “those squirrels eat better than I do!”

It was very quiet in the Park and his voice carried, so I heard those words clearly. Actually, I was way ahead of him on the path, and well within earshot, so I snickered to myself, and didn’t own up to who distributed the goodies, nor was I going to.

I continued walking on the second loop, and, unbelievably if I didn’t hear him utter the same words the next go around. Only this time he was fat shaming the poor squirrels as well! I must share this story with the regular walkers tomorrow … I was later than usual and none of them were around when I arrived. I suspect this fellow is a “newbie” at the Park and I don’t know if he was jealous, or just incredulous, of the squirrels and their goodies. His protestations did make me laugh however. I decided the next time I walked around I would go up and introduce myself and say "hey" and tell him yes the squirrels are spoiled rotten!

This squirrel looked a little ticked off that someone would insinuate they are too well fed.

Now, if this gentleman took issue with the geese, I would really “get it” because look what they did to me this afternoon. There was a large gaggle of them as I walked by, minding my own business and one hissed at me. I couldn’t get the camera turned on quick enough to capture the look of disdain and the wagging pink tongue, so instead I looked over and said “Happy New Year to you too Bud” and kept on walking.

But a little further ahead, there was a potential roadblock as two geese were snoozing in the middle of the path. If I moved to the right, I’d be close to the Creek bank. If I moved over to the left, there were lots of geese (likely with similar attitudes) grazing. So, I took a picture of the pair of geese that were fast asleep, then waited a few minutes, while enjoying the scenery, to see what would transpire. This was the scenario as you see in the gallery of photos. The goose in the last picture was not only mad at me, but terrorized one of its brethren.

I eventually just moved through the throng where I got a stony stare from one of those geese who couldn’t hiss at me because his mouth was full of grass. I told him he lost his credibility a little with grass hanging out of the side of his mouth … kind of like the spinach-in-your-teeth faux pas we humans must endure sometimes.

So that was my first day of the new year. I did get six miles walked because I drove to the Park and the last mile it started to rain a little, but I stayed the course. I had already put in a good amount of steps and was ready to head home anyway, so no harm, no fowl, er … foul.

You can catch up on my blog posts before I started blogging at Patch in August 2013 by going here: http://lindaschaubblog.net