It seems that we've had quite a lot of animal run-ins in the past few weeks. There was the beautiful male cardinal that sat in the tree outside my office and sang his little heart out for two days straight, until his lady came a callin'. They built a nest, she sat on it for two days... and then was gone. We've seen both him and her 'round the yard, but they sadly never laid any eggs.
About two weeks ago, I was sitting in the house on a rainy day when I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye... And for once, I acted on what I thought I saw. Which was a very good thing indeed, because the thing that I thought I saw turned out not only to be real, but to be a furry orange cat that Steph has taken to calling Ferdinand, who snuck in the window to get out of the rain. Luckily, I managed to get him out of the house before Lucy saw him and disaster struck. We weren't quite so lucky the next week, when I mistakenly left the window open before leaving the house for a lovely dinner out with the science kids and Doug, and returned home to Lucy food & water scattered all over the floor and Ferdinand and Lucy having a standoff in the kitchen window. The poor cat was terrified, but Lucy was too, and I managed to get Ferdinand out the window while Steph comforted Lucy in the living room, who afterwards stalked around the house, as if to say, "Where is he? Let me at him!" It was all quite funny and no one was harmed.
And then this week, there was a bit of a mishap with the mockingbird who had nested right outside our door. They fell out of the nest, and Lucy decided that she was so scared she just had to do something about it. Two days later I found Henrietta, Henry or H for short, though we thought they were all goners. Poor H wouldn't let me pick him up, and after researching baby bird care and watching how his mother, Stanley (named in a case of mistaken identity) fed him every 10 minutes, I thought he might be okay. But alas, Steph found him the next day when she was mowing the lawn, not a bit moving. But I did enjoy having my baby bird H for the day, even though it ended sadly. Oh, mother nature...
And to round it out, this morning we saw lots of wildlife on our early morning bike ride including a deer not even 2 feet a away, a stray cat, three large turkey buzzards and another large sort of bird. No pictures of those, but do you recognize these animals?!
