{"id":8612,"date":"2012-08-10T06:00:32","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T10:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=8612"},"modified":"2012-08-10T06:00:32","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T10:00:32","slug":"this-doesnt-happen-every-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=8612","title":{"rendered":"This Doesn&#8217;t Happen Every Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My store is in Vermont, in a small yet bustling village. Vermont by its very nature is thought of a rugged state full of great nature moments. There&#8217;s even a black bear roaming around my neighborhood. But Shelburne Village has not been a hotbed of wild animal activity because it&#8217;s too densely populated with people.<br \/>\nThe bookstore shares a large trash dumpster with two restaurants and a dozen apartments. In the summer, trips to the dumpster can include fending off crows that are strong enough to actually carry a bag of trash out of the dumpster to squirrels who literally pop through the hole they&#8217;ve chewed in the lid when opened. Once a baby raccoon fell in the dumpster and a very smart young man put a long 2&#215;4 in the bin and less than two minutes the little one scampered out and was reunited with his mother.\u00a0I sort of expect the rodent-types now at the dumpster, but\u00a0\u00a0yesterday there was something that made me laugh.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/huge-chick-2.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-8617\" style=\"border-width: 1px; border-color: black; border-style: solid; margin: 5px;\" src=\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/huge-chick-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"414\" height=\"314\" \/><\/a>Free-range chickens were pecking away at the base of the trash area. I never assumed that there was a flock of free-range chickens living in the village. And it never occurred to me that I&#8217;d see a small flock of someone&#8217;s chickens at the bookstore dumpster. \u00a0I tried to get as close as I could to take the photo and the chickens regarded me ruefully. They turned and headed home, scratching the pavement as they went through three stores&#8217; parking lots to get back to wherever they came from.<br \/>\nNow that we&#8217;ve discovered chickens at the trash, more staffers are volunteering to take the garbage out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My store is in Vermont, in a small yet bustling village. Vermont by its very nature is thought of a rugged state full of great nature moments. But Shelburne Village has not been a hotbed of wild animal activity because it&#8217;s too densely populated with people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}