It was a beautiful spring-like day today and we all enjoyed it to the extent that we were outside. This is February and there is plenty of potential for us to drop back down into the deep freeze multiple times. And this blahg entry is really for Grandroobly, who always enjoyed hearing about my encounters with aminals on my walks. He had enough of those encounters of his own during his long life that he usually carried a stick. So bro’, if y’all aren’t partying on the decks of the Edmund Fitz or whatever, maybe you could tune the old coot into my blahg.

We have been in the deep freeze here for months and there have been snowbanks everywhere and I see very few aminals on my 0-dark-30 walks. Squirrels aren’t even out at that time of day. The last few days, we’ve been going through a thaw-freeze cycle and a lot of the snow has melted and folks are getting outside again.

First, I was about 50 yards away from a storm sewer this morning in the dark and an aminal was hanging around in front of it. Cat? No. Raccoon. Of course. That’s where they hang out. He was watching me. He kept kind of moving back into the storm sewer and stopping and as I got within very close range, he did dive into it. I thought. As I got past him, I looked back and he was peeking out at me! Raccoons are very cute but they are not cute when they are on the other side of a rickety screen from your 18-month-old daughter thinking, “dinner has been served!” It’s okay, the kiddo survived and grew up and took my heart to San Francisco. (just kidding, Lizard 🙂 )

Later on in my walk, when it was still black as pitch, I was walking nonchalantly along. Or not. Actually, I was watching for skunks. I know that a skunk encounter might be interesting to write about but I still don’t want to have one. All of a sudden! Fllllrrrrrpppp! It was dark and I could not see what kind of bird it was but whatever it was, I FLUSHED it! I have flushed about a gazillion partridges walking along in the woods. They startled me at first. Grandroobly would just laugh, “you flushed a partridge!” And I got used to it. Today? I was not in the woods. It was pitch black. I don’t usually even *see* birds at that hour. Scared me out of my skin!

The pic? A beautiful but seasonally dormant garden tended by The Botanist and the field beyond. Mid-southern Michigan from a couple weekends ago.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 7:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.