well, finally!

I put up two new bird feeders, and the birds didn't come and didn't come... Finally this afternoon I looked out and there were masses of cardinals, chickadees, tufted titmice.

Gee, guys, took you long enough! :-)

Firing party, make ready...

I was all set, since I was feeling better this afternoon, to go fix the house.

At one corner, where the foundation meets the building wall, there is a hole. I thought I could just seal this hole. That would stop mousies from coming in the hole, crawling up into the wall, and running around inside the house.

Now I want to find the person who worked on this and execute him.

There's siding all around the house, and running around the bottom of the house is a panel about 5" tall and 1" thick that covers the gap between the bottom of the siding and the top of the foundation. Only in this corner, they apparently decided that instead of cutting a short (12") piece of panel to cover the space from the corner to where the back porch structure begins, they would just stick a 9" piece of INSULATION PANEL in there, slap some grey paint on the part that wasn't covered by the downspout for the rain gutter, and move on.

So what I found was not a gap between two boards that could be filled in, but a gap all the way around this piece of insulation (which has partly disintegrated over time) which is manifestly not something we want to leave there.

So now I have pulled the piece of insulation panel out and will have to go to the lumber yard to get a board cut that can be placed where a board should have been the whole time. Grrrr. THEN I will be able to seal that in place and (hopefully) have a mousie-proof house.

Only, of course, there's one of the eves that squirrels have chewed a hole in...