and he's got a cousin in Southern California

Everyone has read Stephanie's post about her "wool-filching rat bastard squirrel" - if not go read it here right now, I'll wait.

Yesterday I joined the le Tour de Fleece a-long where you spin as you watch the Tour de France.

(The Photographer isn't a sports watching guy but he never misses "The Tour" and I've gotten into it too.) So yesterday while dyeing some roving, I dyed one Red, Yellow and Green to match the national flags of a large number of the participants, wrapped them all sausage style and put them in a pot to steam. They're steaming time was up just as I should be starting dinner so I picked the whole thing up and set it outside. After dinner I checked and it was all to hot to handle so lid off I left-it-outside-overnight. (you see where this is going, I'm sure)

Now I don't live in the country, I live in Southern California surburbia in a 40 year old housing tract. We have lots of birds - Crows - due to San Clemente and Rose Canyons open space but not a lot of other wild life that I've seen although there was a squirrel two years ago that was living in the neighbors yard and came over the fence just to drive our dog crazy.

Anyway this morning I looked out the sliding glass door and saw this!

He had to pull this big roll out of the pot and drag it about five feet; only the red section had been unsealed and fiber pulled out. The plastic saved the rest of the roving. This fiber stealing thing also chewed through the plastic on another roll still in the pot and pulled out some gold roving there. (No interested in anything blue or green.)

So I pulled on my gloves, picked up the remains, pulled out as much VM as possible and put it all back in the pot and re-steamed it for 20 mins hoping to neutralized any cooties left behind.

Not to be out done by the fiber thief my Siamese, Ty, chewed through my ipod USB cord!

Yesterday's score: Nature 2, Me 0