The Mystery of the Aquarium Pebbles, cont’d

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the four glass pebbles that inexplicably appeared and disappeared on our front porch over a period of months. First they were aligned under the railing. Then they were somehow knocked off onto the dirt, only to be replaced in the original position by an unknown hand. This continued off and on for about a year, at which point a leaf blower scattered the pebbles, never, I thought, to be seen again. But then last month they were back in the same spot, none the worse for wear.

This time a naturalist friend, who writes a terrific blog about all kinds of flora and fauna, set up a motion activated camera on a nearby bush, and we settled down to wait for the weirdness to resume. For days, nothing happened. Every morning I would look out the window and there were the four pebbles, neatly arranged in a square under the porch railing, untouched. Finally one morning last week I saw that one pebble had been nudged a bit. The next day, it had been nudged some more. The next, it was on the ground.

Breathless, I called my friend, who retrieved the card from the camera and downloaded the film. Here is what we saw:

a white-footed or deer mouse,

a chipmunk,

an unidentified bird,

a Carolina wren, and

(of course) a squirrel.

But the camera had been nudged from its original position, we think by the squirrel, and it may not have caught all the visitors. It has now been reattached more securely.

Although it’s lovely to know that our porch is favored by so many animals, neither mice nor chipmunks, wrens nor squirrels are likely to move non-food objects around. What I am really waiting for is the return of the creature who used to pick the pebbles off the ground and carefully put them back on the porch. It might be a crow, but to get to the pebble spot he or she would have to fly under the eaves, and then walk between the house and some tall, thick winterberry and black chokeberry bushes. Besides, crows like to take their booty back to their nests,  not leave it where they find it. My money is on the raccoon that came to bathe in our birdbath last year. Raccoons are neophilic—that is, they like new things, and they have those dexterous little hands.

The drawing of the white-footed mouse holding a glass pebble is a fantasy, unless ours is a mouse with an innate sense of order and a love of beautiful, non-utilitarian objects—in other words, an artist. Other than that, as the days grow short and the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness sets in, the mystery continues.

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