The Great Spaghetti Mystery

Out in the boonies, one thing you sort of get used to is having wild critters around. Some of them you work to keep out of your stuff, and some you just pay a tithe not to get more destructive.

Like the Mexican Jays. A lot of people call them bluebirds because they're blue...birds. Actually I guess bluebirds is a pretty good name for them.

Anyway, the bluebirds come in raucous flocks, and they'll steal anything remotely edible. It's almost pointless trying to keep a bird feeder for the finches and the songbirds, because the bluebirds will empty it in an hour. One thing I noticed when I first moved here was that they were constantly raiding the dogs' bowl. They couldn't eat the dog kibble but seemed to recognize it as food, so they'd steal it and hide it. Got to where every box that a bird could conceivably get to was stuffed with old dry dog food.

That behavior started tapering off about a year and a half ago, for no apparent reason. I was relieved because, being deep in my period of penurious solitude, I begrudged them the dog food. But then a new phenomenon began, that nobody's ever been able to explain.

Spaghetti started showing up in the damndest places. Every box, every pipe on the barn shelf, every hole where anybody could ever possibly stuff spaghetti was stuffed with frickin' spaghetti.

And some where nobody could have. I went looking for an ammo can where I kept some spare .45 reloads, my ready-ammo cabinet having been depleted. I opened the can, lifted a cleaning rag and on top of the ammo boxes - spaghetti. I have no idea how it got there.

The weird thing about it is that we're not missing any spaghetti. The only bulk spaghetti we have on the place is sealed in a food bucket. I checked - it's fine. And I never see birds flying around carrying spaghetti.

Some weeks ago M took his old Jeep to the city to get it running. He took the body tub off the frame, and then sent me an email with this photo:



Spaghetti.