The Price of a Cute Photo

It seemed to be a good idea at the time.  It would make a cute photo, for sure.  I stuck our youngest rat, Jenny, into one of the birdhouses which we recently posted out in the yard, after it sat way too long (more than a year!!) on our kitchen counter.  (Ironically, last year's post talks about hoping to post the houses before the big company BBQ last July, and it is this year's BBQ (this coming weekend) which finally prompted them to be posted out.

After a long wait, I was able to get a wonderful photo of her (him?) poking her nose out the doorway of the bird house (click photo for a slightly larger view):

Of course, it occurred to me only after she was in the house, that the rat with the darkest face was probably not the best choice for this photo.  This photo shows her face a bit better:

Well, getting a rat into a small cozy dark space is easy, but getting one out is a totally different story.  Good thing I was on a lunch break (I work from home on Fridays), and the weather was wonderful for being outside, but I didn't plan to spend half an hour on this photo.  But once Jenny got in there, she didn't want to  come out, even with my attempts to call her, entice her with food (which she bit and then retreated inside to chew), poke her with a stick (she thought that was fun, playing with the stick!).  Finally I had to stand some distance away, wait until she was curious enough to start coming out, and then snatch her up before she changed her mind and went back inside.

My immediate feeling was "I won't do that again!"  But soon I began wondering if I'd be better to try this with Sam, who would be too big to find the house so comfortable, and is better trained to come to my voice, or more easily enticed by an edible "treat"....  I may just get myself into trouble again, but sometimes that's the price of a cute photo!

Here are photos of the other bird houses, mostly set on the posts holding the supports for our 3 espaliered trees.  This one is not too colorful, since we bought it already painted.  We may eventually paint it more within our bright color scheme:

This one is surrounded by the red currant bush which grows between the espaliered asian pear and espaliered european pear:

 

The twin posts holding up my monstrous yellow perennial (I've forgotten if it's a Heliopsis or what) had a bird house from long ago, but it is now joined by a tiki bird feeder: