Turtles, and Possums, and Deer—Oh My!

One thing about being at Mom’s is the variety of wild life. Sure, my neighbors had a couple of yellow-crowned great herons or something like that in their tree, and sure, I had a ton of squirrels and birds around, but that’s been nothing like just a single day at Mom’s.

As for regular stuff, she’s got a great birdfeeder set up in the back, and tons of birds visit. Naturally, of course, the squirrels love it too. And Howard, as you can imagine, loves running out to chase the squirrels. As we took our walk Thursday morning, he even spotted a deer. Then came Saturday.

Mom and I spent most of the day working in the house. We spent a little time seeing our creations from the day before, but we also got her computer stuff set up, I caught up on some blogging, and she worked on organizing her inbox and favorites. (Of course, you can give a person file folders, but if they don’t think they’ll remember what they put in each folder, they won’t do any good. Well, at least I gave the (knowledge of) folders.)

Sometime late that morning, I noticed something in the back yard. Well, my goodness! It was a turtle! Howard had never seen a turtle, that I knew of, and I figured he’d be intrigued. But to protect the turtle, I did leash Howard.

When Howard finally spotted it, he was indeed interested.


And he followed along behind it, sniffing, and sometimes getting close enough to jump back with the turtle stuck his head up.

Of course, then the turtle withdrew into his shell, and Howard, being the dog he is,, well, knocked on the door. Yes, he pawed at it. Me, fearful for the turtle, pulled Howard back. This went on a while, and finally, I decided they’d both probably had enough.

Later that day, we spotted the following out Mom's front window:


On Sunday morning, we saw this cutie:


When Howard and I went out to see if we could see the bunny, alas, he had just hopped away. But we looked down the road, and we spotted two deer---one near the road and one in the woods. They didn't want us too close, so the pictures aren't very good, but here ya go:




But I think Howard's most exiting time came Saturday night. I was in the living room, taking care of a little computer things and watching a little tv. Howard had already gone in my room to go to bed. Then he came out. He rushed to the back door, demanding to go in the back yard.

I let him out, and a few minutes later, he was ready to come back in. When I let him in, this is what I noticed in the bird feeder:

Umm Hmmm: a possum! I clicked a few photos, then went back inside. As I was uploading the pics to leave for Mom, Howard went and knocked on her door. She came out, I filled her in, and we all went back outside. This time, though, Howard found the possum and thought he had to stay there, bark at it, and keep it in place. What a little hunting dog I have!

The poor possum, of course, was terrified, clinging to the highest point on the bird feeder pole.


Finally, though, I offered to take Howard on a walk, and he was willing to leave the possum. We walked down then back up Mom's street and called it a night.