It's a jungle out there.

When Scrappy and I woke up this morning, I looked out the window, as I always do, to see if anybody is availing themselves of the bird feeder.  Well, this morning the bell was swinging back and forth, and with no breeze, I knew somebody had just been by.  What followed convinced me from now on, we go to bed with the camera.

Mrs. Cardinal lands on the shed roof.  Landing on the far end, she hops her way towards the food, looking around suspiciously with every step.  Apparently secure, she flits down onto the bell.   Picks three or four seeds, pausing after each to chew and then spit out unwanted shells.  Taking only what she wanted for the moment , she flew across the back yard into the woods.

She no more landed than Mr. Cardinal soared over to the tree above the shed.  He was chirping like a radar- CHEEP...CHEEP...CHEEP...- and continued to do so as he lighted onto the shed about midway.  Even more suspicious in his looking around, his chirps took on the character of, "Yep.  It's me. I'm here. Right here.  I'm going to step towards the seed now.  Yep, still me."  Reminded me of an Abbot and Costello or Laurel and Hardy movie with ghosts.  Finally making his move, he hangs from the wire frame, rather than standing on his food like the missus, and has at it.

He stayed much longer than she did- I'm guessing he was trying to recover some of the manhood he lost on approach.  Just then, two things happened simultaneously.  One was Mrs. Cardinal got tired of waiting around and flew over, intending to land on the fence gate.  The other was Mr. Chipmunk came running down the top bar of the fence, between the pickets.  I am not exaggerating when I say that she came three or four inches from landing ON the chipmunk!

I assumed that these brave souls would no doubt scare each other off, but thought I'd run down and get the camera for their return.  Sure enough...

It seems Mr. Chipmunk didn't retreat to the neighbors as per usual, but only to the ground near the shed, because he came flying out of nowhere from the shed roof to the bell.  Unlike the Cardinals, he was content to sit there and eat until his head popped, so I openned the window and let Scrappy run him off.

Then we waited to see if the birds would return.  And waited.  After about twenty minutes, I decided to go take care of the 3 Ss (shower, shave and.. well, you know).  When I came back, Mrs. C had returned, but didn't stay long enough to get a picture.  But good ol' chip sure came back...

So I quietly mused to myself about perhaps getting a munk-proof set-up as I sat down to put my shoes on, take Scrappy for his walk, and come back to see how many liberals on FB were calling me a skinhead bigot today.  Shortly, I looked over to see the bell had disappeared- and I wasn't long in identifying the culprit-

Figuring the bird didn't really need (or use) the water, I dumped it out and put the remainder of the bell in the tray.  I had at one point gotten the bell back on its stick, but I didn't figure that it'd take much more than a jenny wren or a fat butterfly to knock it back off.  Gotta consider liability and all- I'm not paying for Chip or Mr. Cardinal's whiplash claim.  Here in a bit, I'll do some more musing about what to do about the situation, but for now I'll just wait to see if that greedy little shithead figures out where the bell went.