Tags
animals, Beauty, birds, black bear, creation, hillside beach manitoba, humour, Lake Winnipeg, nature, photography, Pileated Woodpecker, reflections
No, this is not a golf story And if it was a golf story from me it would not include a hole in one. I believe in getting my money’s worth and get more swings per dollar than the average golfer.
This one is about adventures with nature.
We have a nice little cabin in the woods near Lake Winnipeg. One of the decks is screened-in so we can enjoy meals and sitting outside even if mosquitoes decide to invade en masse. There is a screen door into the dining area. It’s a wooden door with a mesh/screen window about four feet by two. The original screen was made of fine wire mesh. Fine enough to keep out the bloodsucking insects, allow a nice view of the woods and allow air to circulate. All the windows in this part of Canada have screens – either metal or nylon mesh.
One day when we arrived at the cabin we were greeted by a young, male, black bear. He was standing on the front deck trying to open the front door. A few honks from the car horn and a few shouts and he ambled off into the bush.
We discovered that he had also been around the back and had tried to enter the dining area as there was a large jagged hole in the middle of the door screen. Big enough for even the Manitoba provincial bird (the mosquito) to enter. It was a very large hole.
In checking with the Department of Natural Resources we learned that there was a young male about. Apparently someone had thought it a fine idea to store a freezer full of food in a screened-in area of their deck. Mr B had smelled it out, found his way in through the screened door and consumed some frozen goodies. He apparently decided that there might be food behind every screened door on a deck. He never tried to get in through any of the other screened areas, just the doors.
I went into the nearest town and bought some screening material, took the mouldings off the door, removed the old screening and installed new. I put the mouldings back. This used up the better part of a morning. But at least the bloodsuckers wouldn’t be getting in through the gaping hole that evening, no offence to the credit-card companies.
We enjoyed our newly screened door for a week or so. Then one day we arrived at the cabin to discover Mr B had returned and made another attempted B and E. This meant another trip to the store and screen-door repair.
When this occurred a third time I stuck some duck-tape over the hole. It didn’t look very nice, and in reality didn’t stick too well. But it was a lot easier to stick on a new patch than do the screen fixing. I was able to absorb the comments and suggestions about ‘doing it right”, and the questions “Why do you have a piece of duck-tape stuck on your door?”.
But eventually, after several weeks (perhaps months) of procrastination (in government I learned the art of creative procrastination, it saved an endless amount of bother), I decided to fix the screen.
After the trip to the store and an hour of removing the old and replacing with new metal screening material. the door looked as good as old again. It was only the screening fabric I changed not the door.
Satisfied, I turned my back, walked about 10 metres onto the grass, when I heard a very loud metallic BANG!. I stopped in my tracks and thought very unkind things about Mr B. There were a few additional B words that came to mind. But when I turned around, I discovered a rather disoriented Pileated Woodpecker staggering around, then it flew off fast. The Pileated woodpecker is the largest of the woodpecker family in this area – the model for Woody-the-Woodpecker. I looked at my screen-door. There was a neat round two-inch diameter hole, dead centre in the middle of the screen. Woody had flown right into the screen and left a giant woodpecker-sized hole in the door.
He had scored a definite hole, in one.
I wan’t too pleased with Mr W, but it was kind of funny to think of this horizontal bird sticking out of a screen door. No birds were injured in this episode.
Here are a couple of photos of the culprit.