[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n Garage Sale Saturday, Ron Tom came home from taking KissMe to visit sales with a tidbit from LaVerne McClendon. An intruder has been entering through her doggy door. It’s eating dog food on top of the washing machine in her utility room. She suspects it’s a raccoon. The creature has not ventured through the second doggy door into her kitchen.

A trap has not caught the creature that was lifting the lid on our 5-gallon storage bucket and eating just a few sunflower seeds. 

Feeding whole sunflower seeds in a feeder means an undesirable patch of shelled seeds underneath.

Feeding shelled peanuts and even whole peanuts, there’s no mess beneath the feeder.  Our “whole peanut wreath feeder”, that looks like a big slinky, attracts a variety of birds. One afternoon, I used our car in the driveway as a “bird blind.”  In between squirrels’ attempts to reach the wreath feeder, I photographed Blue Jays, White-winged Doves, and a juvenile Northern Cardinal.

That cardinal had colorations of a Pyrulluxia, gray with some red, and a tall crest.  The beak gave away the correct identification.  The gray bird had a long, pointed beak.  A Pyrulluxia has a beak like a parrot, small and rounded.

Mountain City is lighter after last week-end’s annual Dumpster Days. Mountain Cityians filled 11 dumpsters (3 more than originally ordered) with unwanted “stuff”, not suitable for weekly household trash pickup. Hazardous materials and tree limbs were not accepted.

The Mountain City TX (local government) FaceBook page gives a shout out to Rebecca Schroeder, Rick Tarr, John Ambrose and the Senefeld’s for their help this past weekend.  And, it expresses special thanks to Vicki Senefeld for coordinating everything and for being available and working out at dumpster days all weekend

On the Loving Mountain City FaceBook page, Amy Hilton expresses gratitude to Penny Moulder for two years of service as LMC Coordinator.  With Penny stepping down, who will step up? Amy served for six years. All of the individual events within the year have a coordinator except 4th of July and Fire & Ice.

If you’re interested in coordinating either event or serving as Loving Mountain City Coordinator, respond to Amy Hilton’s post on Facebook.

Trudy Hayter, who lives near us on Live Oak Drive, visited the Nacogdoches Blueberry Festival this past Saturday while visiting family in Deep East Texas. She stopped by the Texas Bluebird Society booth, looking for Ron Tom and me. Trudy caught us on camera intently engaged with our smartphones behind the booth. Our app for accepting credit cards was not functioning well at that moment.

If you run into a Mountain Cityian out of town, that’d make a nice tidbit. Please send word to ptom5678@gmail.com (subject: Tidbit) or 512-517-5678. Thanks! Love, Pauline