As I type this blog the ground outside is covered with an early November snow fall and the winds are bitterly cold and gusting. I am calling a truce to the ongoing battle I have been facing throughout the spring, summer and fall with many of the critters that inhabit the same ground that I inhabit.

All of us, the critters and myself included, think the area we inhabit belongs to us and not to anyone else. That’s why the mother white-tailed deer and her fawn looked at me curiously this fall when I drove off my driveway, sped across the lawn, laid on the horn as I attempted to scare the duo from feasting on the pumpkins displayed  in our yard. I hope nobody was driving by on the highway at the moment I lost control and viewed me speeding across my lawn. Rumors of mental issues would have spread through out our small town very quickly. 🙂

As Thanksgiving approaches businesses flavor coffee, cookies and a whole host of food items with the taste of pumpkin. After the massive pumpkin feeding frenzy by the deer at our house this fall I’m almost certain someone is going to harvest one of those pumpkin glutting white-tails and when the family gathers around to enjoy some delicious deer sausage someone will mutter, “This deer sausage has a slight pumpkin flavor!” 🙂

But enough complaining about all the critter competition I face each growing season. As I said earlier I have decided to form a truce with all my critter competitors at least for the upcoming winter.

In fact I feel sorry for the deer that I was just ‘bad mouthing’ a couple paragraphs ago. They and I are enjoying a truce but they and the deer hunters aren’t. Facebook is already filling up with pictures of eight point, ten point and even twelve point bucks looking very dead with a proud, orange clad hunter kneeling beside it. At least my truce with them will eliminate some of the pressure on their lives.

Can you imagine if the “shoe were on the other foot” and the deer would be hunting us and taking pictures to display on their Facebook? Only six foot five inch men would make the Facebook post. Since I’m a mere five foot six inches tall I probably wouldn’t even be shot at.

And you ladies no matter how good looking you might be nobody wants to tag a female. You can count on one hand the number of female deer pictures posted on  Facebook.

I offer a truce to my Cucumber beetle friends too. Cucumber beetles crawl under litter or burrow into the soil in an attempt to survive winter. Before doing that however they lay hundreds of eggs in the soil that will hatch when spring arrives and the battle for cucumber and pumpkin plant survival will begin again. The truce will be over.

My only hope is the fact that cucumber beetles are cold blooded. That means when the air temperature is -10 degrees below zero, yep you guessed it, the cucumber beetle’s body temperature is -10 degrees below zero! So if we have a winter with little snow to insulate the little insect’s body or its eggs neither may survive the winter and the truce will be forever. 🙂 I and my pumpkins would enjoy that occurrence immensely.

The truce also includes the thirteen lined ground squirrels and the Richardson ground squirrels. They however won’t even be aware of that truce since they have weeks ago lined their underground den with dried grass and are fast asleep and will miss winter completely.

I may have some bad news concerning our furry ground squirrels however. There may be no need for a truce for them for years to come. It seems I was walking through a patch of switch grass when I stumbled across a vacant den with flattened grasses all around it. I would hypothesize the den contained a litter of coyotes or red fox pups from this summer and you know what both of those species love to eat? Ground squirrels are one of their favorite delicacies!

So the whistle of an alarmed Richardson ground squirrel will not be heard very often next spring as coyotes or red fox have dined on them all summer. 🙁

The red squirrels have had a very active fall. They discovered my miniature pumpkins piled in the sales area in our yard and of course as I’ve mentioned before the little varmints think that pile is for their own use. So they have been carrying the little pumpkins off and burying them all around our yard. They plan on having many winter snacks I assume.

I spent the fall looking out our living room window watching those little bushy tailed thieves lumbering along with their mouth clasping a miniature pumpkin. Later I would find the pumpkin sloppily buried in the lawn.

But they too I have included in my ‘truce’ proclamation. Maybe one of those buried pumpkins will be just enough to help a squirrel survive the brutal Minnesota winter. That would make me feel good. Anyway the squirrels will entertain us all winter at our bird feeder as they pick up the sunflower seeds that fall from the feeder. Blue jays are very sloppy eaters and they come every morning in the winter and unknowingly spill sunflower seeds on the ground and provide a food supply for the ‘pumpkin thieving’ squirrels.

Bird feeder watching can be very entertaining in the winter. 🙂

Thanksgiving is just around the corner so offering a truce to all my garden growing foes seems very fitting. Now if one of those wild turkeys that graced our yard all summer would wander through again I would eliminate the truce thing for just long enough for me to load my shotgun and provide us a turkey for Thanksgiving. 🙂

And of course you’ve known me long enough to know that I was just joshing you on that last paragraph. 🙂

Until next time.