I noticed this spring that I was much more aware of the animals in my midst. I heard the birds more clearly, and I spotted a woodpecker, a blue jay, a cardinal, and perhaps the fattest robin, sitting on our fence, that I’ve ever seen.
The neighbor’s cat, an outside feline, seems to want to come to our house. More than once, he was sitting right at the front door, and once at the back door. We think this would engender a bad outcome, especially because our indoor male cat, Midnight, is sometimes barely pleasant to us and our girl cat, Stormy.
We made the mistake of leaving a used pitcher of maple syrup on the kitchen counter after having pancakes. The next morning, the pitcher was overrun by ants! Yuck. We hadn’t seen any before then, in months. Now that we’ve cut off the food supply, we still see a stray insect in the strangest places, such as on the ceiling. The Daughter does NOT like them.
During a severe thunderstorm on May 18, we saw something crossing our yard. But it wasn’t until a massive lightning flash that I could determine it was a skunk. I felt sorry for it, almost.
But our strangest visitor to our backyard has to be the woodchuck. We never had one before this year, but this one has come by at least a half dozen times. My wife and I decided we needed to name the creature, so we call him/her? – we had no idea! – Murray, after Bill Murray, who was involved in a popular movie about February 2.
Initially, he may have been attracted to the compost bin deep in the back of the yard. But he has ventured much farther towards the back porch, digging holes for no discernible reason, and eating the grass, likely the clover.
He/she almost got to the picnic table near the house one morning when the next-door neighbor came out and startled Murray. For a nearly round creature, he/she moved surprisingly fast.
Then a few days later, SHE came back, much thinner, and with four offspring!
So there’s our recent menagerie, wild and domesticated.
ABC Wednesday at its new home, Round 21