Now, to the topic at hand: Being the senior bipeds at our place should give Anne and me some sense of status. Unfortunately, the only other bipeds around are the nitwit chickens. That pretty much cancels any sense of bipedal superiority.

Anyway, we featherless bipeds had a busy time last Thursday afternoon, harvesting corn. Anne pulled a bushel of Silver Queen off the tall stalks and then handed them off to me. I hauled them across the yard to a shady spot and shucked them.

A dozen at a time, Anne then took the shucked ears from me and ran them into the kitchen, dumped them into seething water to blanch, and into ice water to cool. Later we both sliced the kernels off the cobs, packed them plastic bags for freezing. We’ll remember that beautiful September day during snow time, as often as we add some fat kernels to soups or casseroles.

Indeed it was a beautiful day, and the best part for me was sitting under our largest basswood, shucking the corn and watching the chickens patrol the lawn as they hunted bugs in the slanting late afternoon light. As the chickens did their job, Owen the cat was sitting just behind me, and Blue the dog was sprawled close by, comatose.

"God’s in His heaven," I thought, "all’s right with the world." But not for long. The marauding chickens made a quick sortie toward the house and Anne’s lilies. I got up and started toward them; and Blue, leashed to keep him from chasing chickens, headed the same way. Without either running or barking, he gave a sudden jump at the birds. They all rushed off toward the henhouse, squawking, "Murder! Mayhem!" Hens are drama queens.

"OK, Blue!" I said, patting him. "I’ll just park you by the flowerbed to hold those birds at bay." While he dutifully sat, I brought from the house the remains of a knucklebone, already a three-days’ project of gnawing for him. Blue settled down at once with it; and, assured that the lilies were safe, I went back to the kitchen to get myself something with ice and a slice of lime.

When I came back out, I found Blue engaged with the bone, holding it fast between front paws and grinding away. He was totally ignoring brazen chickens that were now on three sides of them, some as close as two feet. So much for guard duty. Dogs are single-minded about food.

I chased the birds toward the henhouse and went back to my seat in the shade. Owen was still there and sat looking with feline contempt at Blue and at the chickens, which were already edging their way back. The old cat got up. Grumbling to himself, he stalked past the dog and into the flowerbed. There he settled down, eyes fixed balefully on the chickens. Evidently they got the message. Not another one approached.

That we even had corn to pick this year was a triumph for Gardener Anne, and secondarily for me. Last year, you may remember, I told you of the wonderful stand of corn Anne had raised, and how we watched it daily for the perfect point of ripeness. Sadly, from the tree line across the field, other creatures were watching, too. And at the very time we were saying gleefully, "Tomorrow’s the day to pick!" raccoons were saying, "Tonight’s the night!"

The eight-foot fence we’d put around Anne’s whole garden has done its job in keeping out deer. But that fateful night the masked marauders simply climbed up the outside of the fence and scampered down the inside. They wiped out most of the corn crop, wantonly chomping a half an ear here, half an ear there, knocking over all the tall plants in the process. Then they were up, over, and outside the fence again. It was a sad morning when we discovered what they’d done.

This year, as soon as the corn went into tassels, I augmented our defenses. Around the outside of the tall fence I strung three strands of electric wire, then hooked them to a transformer powered from the garage. The transformer had an orange light to show it was working properly. Every evening I’d swing by the fence and find it glowing as evilly as Owen’s eyes, fixed on those chickens. The charged wires did the trick. I’m ashamed at the pleasure I took in imagining the head raccoon nosing it, bouncing backward, then falling over himself to get back to the tree line.

"Holy crap!" he must have babbled in raccoonese. "Don’t go near that fence!" And none did.

With garden harvesting now winding down now, animal harvesting is at hand. In 10 days Sir Francis Bacon, our pig up at the Pulleyblanks’, will accompany two sty-mates on a truck ride through Edmeston and down to Columbus. There they will be translated into pork. The same week the four lambs will take a ride down to Laurens, and with similar effect.

When I mentioned the lambs’ impending trip to a Fly Creek lady, she recoiled and said, "Oh, how can you take those babies off to such a fate!" I explained that, in sheep’s quick cycle of growth, they aren’t babies any more. They’re rowdy teen-agers. "Oh," she said evenly, "that’s all right."

She’s a high school teacher, you see.

Read about Jim Atwell’s new book "From Fly Creek _ Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country" at JimAtwell.com.