I have cameras hidden away all around my house, and they could easily nail a burglar, although how embarrassing to be a burglar at my house because what could you take of any value?
There’s an old typewriter we use as a doorstop. Our flat-screen TV was the very latest thing in 2006; you have to jiggle it for the sound to work.
I keep my cash on my dresser in a coffee mug my kids gave me. It says, “I don’t need Google, my father knows everything,” which for years I mistook as a compliment. At the moment the mug is flush: two 20s, three singles, and 27 cents in change. Not really worth burgling, if you ask me.
But I love my cameras because they capture video of fascinating wildlife. Squirrels scamper, bunnies bop. Raccoons and groundhogs vie for screentime. A sullen coyote patrols the perimeter. For a recovering Chicagoan, reared on pavement, it’s the Wild Kingdom. Under our apple trees, for a few days this spring, some deer operated a popup maternity ward: MASH with antlers.
Occasionally, however, the Lion King thing goes from thrilling to chilling. I get woozy even at the sound of blood, so my backyard gets a bit too RIP Mufasa for me sometimes.
Nature is savage.
Take my neighbor’s cat. It’s an omnivore, so it’s happy here — so much to munch.
Far be it from me to comment on the wisdom of letting your cat roam. I used to have a real-life version of the Graham Nash song: “a very very very fine house, with two cats in the yard.”
A dear friend heard about my cats coming and going as they pleased, and she took me to task. Cats kill songbirds! she fumed. My attitude was, a soprano sparrow is nice, but not worth the hassle of keeping my frustrated felines from squirting out between my feet every time I opened a door.
Then I suddenly had one-and-a-half cats, thanks to that patrolling coyote.
Since that funeral, my one remaining fully intact cat has been imprisoned indoors. Never appears on my nature-cams.
The neighbor’s cat is another story. I see it making the rounds almost every day. It seems to be keeping the rodent population down. Not much of a rat problem here on outer Linebrook Road in Ipswich. Ditto moles, ditto voles.
Nor have I ever once encountered a smelly shrew, a bothersome beaver, a marauding muskrat, or a prickly porcupine. And not a single lemming.
Good work, kitty.
As for rodent in the “cute” category, squirrels must outrace the cat because I’ve never come across a squirrelly carcass in the yard. And if the neighbor’s cat is chomping on chipmunks, the survivors apparently celebrate by making baby chipmunks because there’s no shortage of chipmunks around here.
Yesterday, however, the cat crossed a line.
A hapless mouse made the mistake of skittering directly in front of a camera at exactly the wrong moment.
The cat — perhaps seeing an opportunity to become a social-media sensation — pounced on the little fellow and proceeded to chow down.
It was bad enough watching the video, but video is not the only feature of a backyard cam.
There’s also audio.
As of today, I can attest to the quality of the audio on my camera. I would call it “real-life,” or shockingly “true-to-life,” but this little flick was not really about “life,” unless you’re thinking “Circle of Life.”
At the beginning of the movie, the audio track featured the mouse. Jamie Lee Curtis in the Halloween movies had nothing on this mouse, except that the mouse was screaming three or four octaves higher.
This part of the audio track was understandably brief.
After that came the part where I had to sit down to keep from passing out. Those little mouse bones have a distinctive snap-crackle-pop.
You can turn off the microphone on these cameras, and believe me, that’s what I’ve done. From now on, Lion King Linebrook is a silent movie.
Follow Ipswich resident Doug Brendel at Outsidah.com. Bring Tums.