Hickory Nuts and Bubblegum

     Hey, everyone. We had a fun day, here at the green retreat. We took a long walk in the woods and found some neat things. I noticed that the hickory nuts are falling. They seem unusually big this year but may seem so because of the string of dry years we've had lately. Squirrels and deer like to eat them. You can see that one of these nuts has been chewed up.
    We noticed that the deer have been licking our mineral block. A mineral block is a big, heavy square made of salt and all the stuff deer like to lick. I don't hunt but we like for the deer to come around, so we can watch them. They will, and have, literally licked a hole in the ground around the block. After a rain, the taste is in the soil, I suppose.

We found this cool feather. It is oddly shaped. I like the colors on the right but I don't think it is shaped right to be a hawk's, so I'll have to get my bird book and try to look it up. Later in our walk, we found an array of tiny feathers at the creek and I suspect that a fox ate both a mother bird and her brood.

       Not far from the salt block is a big hole in the ground. You can tell it was dug by a critter. Roots are still inside it and if you look close you can see fragments of a bee hive. A fox, or skunk, or bear, will dig down and find a yellowjacket nest so they can eat them. Seems a bizarre meal, eh? I think this was the work of a fox. I saw several other holes. Carley thinks that a fox has dug a series of tunnels and is sub-letting the place for condos. Ha, ha. I hope he prospers at it. They say that foxes are clever...
    An odd thing happened during our walk. In this one area, we distinctly smelled bubblegum. This is in the middle of the woods, 12 miles from the nearest place you could buy a coke. Sometimes you smell odd things in the woods, but usually much less pleasant things than bubblegum. I laughed and wondered aloud if a mountain lion had found some bubblelicious. Then it occurred to me that some ladies wear perfume that is scented like bubblegum. If you are walking along and someone has been in the area you can often smell cologne, tobacco smoke or the like, but we never have anyone walking on our land.
     We walked on to the creek and on our return we smelled the same smell at the same place. I knew that crushed ferns smell like perfume, but not bubblegum. I knew that snakes smell like cucumber, but not bubblegum. So what gives???
    I think that I'll write a story about it. The mystery of the bubblegum smell.
    As I've mentioned before, your sense of smell is vastly improved by drinking champagne. It cleanses the palate and helps you taste your food better. Many times, I can be forewarned of the presence of an animal because I catch their scent. Unfortunately, this has a side effect. I abhor being around people who drown themselves in perfume. They have burned out their nose by overexposure. This is called olfactory fatigue. I have a friend who has been working around chlorine gas for years. He can no longer smell the deadly stuff. Not a good thing.
    If I figure out the mystery of the bubblegum, I'll let you know. Perhaps there is a squirrel that has picked up a bad habit, here at the author's green retreat.
    I'm CE Wills.