JOHN PEPIN

“Who was that man, nobody knows all across this land,” – Nick Lowe

At the end of a crippling-cold and dark winter’s night, the weak rays of the morning sun would greet me with a curious bit of intrigue I was determined to unravel.

The mystery I detail now surrounds certain incidents taking place within the borders of one county, in one residential backyard, on dates and times that have since withdrawn themselves into a rolling and acrid fog of uncertainty.

Let me begin by telling you that clues were evident, but their significance unclear.

This wasn’t “A Study in Scarlett,” nor “Death in the Clouds,” “The Murder at the Vicarage” or even “The Mystery of the Tolling Bell” or “The Witch Tree Symbol.”

But these strange occurrences tugged at the shirt-sleeved elbow of my mind, nonetheless.

It had begun a few mornings prior. I think.

I often start my day with a look outdoors. I want to see what the weather is like to determine how I might want to dress for the day’s events. I also want to find out whether there are any animals out in the yard to watch.

It’s one of the best times of the day for me.

On that first morning, a few days back, I was to see something that unbeknownst to me would mark the beginning of a pattern of similar and puzzling events.

Against the trunk of a maple tree, a small metal cage measuring 4 inches square sat empty, a door sprung open at the bottom, with a silvery, metal chain left dangling from a question mark-shaped hook inside.

The cage was attached to the tree with a trio of framing nails.

Only hours earlier, the cage had been filled with a square-shaped, 1-inch-thick cake made from suet, seeds and peanut butter.

The chain had been put in place, the hook, hooked and the door of the cage had been shut and secured.

But now, the cage was empty, the cake gone.

Clearly, there was an unknown culprit on the loose – one with suet grease smeared across its smirking lips or beak.

The game was afoot.

As it relates to wild birds, suet is white, rendered fat, usually from the kidneys of cattle or sheep that is fashioned into cakes and offered to birds. The cakes are usually blended with seeds, nuts or other treats to make them more scrumptious.

However, they needn’t be. Birds will eat the suet plain.

Sometimes suet cakes have outrageous names intended to attract the attention of bird feeding buyers. They include “Orange Mania,” “Cherry Crunch,” “Hot Pepper Delight” and “Blueberry Dough.”

In addition to cakes, suet is packaged and sold as balls, plugs, crumbles, pellets or shreds. Suet can even come shaped as shamrocks, wreaths, hearts or bells. Some people use molds to make their own suet creations at home.

Birds eat the suet to acquire energy during cold winter days. In warmer months, no-melt suet must be used, or suet needs to be rendered repeatedly to raise its melting temperature or it will soften and melt into something greasy and disastrous.

Suet from butchers is typically provided in large hunks and can be hung outdoors in a mesh produce bag for feeding birds in wintertime.

In the springtime, suet cages may also be filled with string, grass or other items birds gather as nesting materials. In summer, adult birds will often bring young to feed at suet feeders, attracting species not typically seen there, like robins and catbirds.

The suet cages at the core of this mystery were fashioned from rubber-coated metal. Gaps between the bars of the cage were large enough for birds to extract suet in limited-sized chunks.

Much like humans, birds are not expected to eat a whole cake at once!

The door to the suet cages is typically secured with two metal clasps that extend over one end of the cage. There is also a chain attached to the cage with a hook on the end to help hold the suet in place and to keep it from falling out.

Here, some type of nocturnal cat burglar, adept at springing locks, hooks, chains or clasps was at work.

Two of the most quizzical aspects of this initial incident were the complete vanishing of the suet cake and what or who might have done this.

Might the winds been strong enough to force open the cage door and the cake dropped into the deep, soft snow below? Maybe, but no.

Was it perhaps the work of a white-tailed deer, hungry flying squirrels or a bear?

Perhaps, but no, I don’t think so and no.

I replaced the cake and wrote the occurrence off as a fluke.

However, the next night, the same thing happened.

I began to understand that these circumstances would repeat themselves as many times as I would replace the cake.

There were two cages fastened to the tree in that location. Both were robbed by what the media was now referring to as the “That Takes the Cake Bandit.”

One stranger thing, suet cakes in other cages attached to cedar posts 30 or so feet away were not touched – not on any of the nights.

I began making random checks of the cages with the help of a bright flashlight. Only one night did I ever see anything feeding at the cages. It was a flying squirrel that appeared to be only nibbling as it sat atop the cage.

Because of the location being associated with the maple tree, I did wonder if whatever was at work was connected to the tree.

Perhaps a gray squirrel with a nest up high in the branches was sneaking down before I got up to the windows each morning. Observation of squirrels in other instances led me to discount this theory as a flight of fancy.

After losing a few more cakes to this astuto bandito, I decided to replace the cages with ones that filled from the top, that had no door or latch or chain or hook to exploit.

This modification worked. The cakes were no longer disappearing.

But as the Plato proverb states: “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

After a few nights with no incidence of disturbance, and days of feeding at the cakes by woodpeckers, nuthatches, crows and jays, something new began to occur.

The thief switched locations, but not tactics.

This prompted a review of the riddle: “Which president wore the biggest hat? The one with the biggest head.”

Of course. This was a crime of opportunity!

The apparently easy meal opportunity had ended in one location and shifted now to the cages on the cedar posts.

The evidence at the scene was familiar, the modus operandi the same. This devilish cat was now burgling sweet meats from these cages.

But he either got clumsy or overconfident.

He made a mistake that would lead to his identity being revealed. In broad daylight, no less.

On this morning, after the crippling-cold and dark winter’s night. The day when the weak rays of the sun met me with a new challenge in this mystery, I came to the window at about 10:30 a.m. on this weekend sleep-in day.

A suet cake was gone from one of the four cages attached to one of the cedar posts. The door to the cage was ajar, the hook dangling.

But this time, something was different.

The suet cake was not missing. It was laying in the snow a couple feet away.

As I studied it, a puff of snow shot into the air.

Suddenly, there he was. We were face-to-face less than 5 feet away from each other.

It was none other than Monsieur Mustela frenata!

This was a long-tailed weasel, a known nighttime predator of mice, voles and other small mammals, but known also to appear during daylight hours!

I reached for my camera while he ducked so quickly and slid around the cedar posts and deep into the snow – like a land version of his relative, the otter.

He was swift, white like the snow, with black eyes and the end of his tail dark – an ingenious trait meant to deter hawks and owls that would like to grab him like a suet cake.

The weasel raced across the snow to the base of the maple tree. He then shot across the yard ducking in between some stones in the rock garden, then to the base of another tree and then another.

He made a dash back toward the suet cake. I moved to the other window. There was no time to focus or to shoot my camera.

One last run right toward me before turning at the house, he was gone, leaving only widely spaced tracks in the snow headed to the woods.

Like Sherlock Holmes respected the intellect of Professor Moriarty, I remain in awe of my worthy adversary now gone like a half dozen, fruit and peanut flavored suet cakes, but by no means forgotten.

One disturbing thought persists: was the weasel there for the suet or the birds?

The game continues…

Editor’s note: Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan’s world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.