Female Summer Tanager. Photo by Chris Sloan, https://csloan.smugmug.com/.

We think we’ve rid our home of squirrels in the walls.  Sometimes it sounded like they were determined to tear up the house like it was a pile of nuts.  I played videos of hawks’ cries at top volume.  That ran them off, but only temporarily.  Then we ran an ozone generator in the attic and hoped they’d clear out at their first whiff of it and not die.  We’re not smelling anything, so far, and we don’t hear them, anymore. We put out the intent that the squirrels find the abundant food all around here, but away from the house.

Jerry moved the bird feeders—the cause of it all—from the deck railing to a tree at the edge of the woods.  No more close-ups of smaller birds like finch, titmouse, cedar wax wings, nut hatches, juncos… and—yes, squirrels.  I just HAD to revisit (at the end of this article) a video of Ray Stevens and the Mississippi Squirrel Revival and renew memories of Bertha Better-Than-You.

Male Summer Tanager. Photo by Scott Soomershoe, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. https://www.facebook.com/scott.somershoe

Though fewer birds are up close we can still gaze across the backyard to the pasture fence and across to the trees that come up from the woods along Bluewater Creek: white egrets (cow birds that stay near the cows in the pasture), the usual vultures and occasional swift flying hawk across the yard. And in the yard, birds like red-bellied woodpeckers, doves, cardinals, bluebirds, and red summer tanagers.  This week I saw my first yellow tanager, as confirmed by photos on Tennessee’s Watchable Wildlife. I learned that the yellow ones are female, while the red ones are male.

Today’s delight was a female eastern bluebird who stood on a fence post for several minutes, occasionally swooping down into the grass and returning with a serving of healthy Alabama bug, while we got a good look at her.

I wish I had not run over my best binoculars!

Our home offers plenty of opportunities to sense our closeness to Spirit by feeling ourselves a part of all of the nature around us, as well as the four elements of air, water, Earth and fire.  We’re making it a habit of enjoying one day per week with no electronics and no communication with each other or anyone else until just before sunset.  On those days we make it a point to spend more time doing our individual spiritual work.  From this we gain life energy while helping us all go through this time of shift in the early stage of our New Earth.