Wildlife

One of the things that I thought I might miss when we moved into a neighborhood inside city limits was the wildlife.

Birds.  Shocking, I know.

I figured we'd have birds - and we have, with hummingbirds this summer and winter birds so far this fall - but I wasn't as sure we'd have some of the other critters that we got at the old house.  It was fun to look out the back window and see coyotes or ducks or, once and very memorably, a groundhog who was considering making his home in our crawlspace.

I shouldn't have worried.  I put up our winter bird feeders about two weeks ago.  It didn't take long for the birds (and the neighbor's two tabby cats, whom we affectionately call Fat Bob and Skinny Bob though they're probably female) to discover the feeder.  The birds enjoy the food and taunting the cats.  In fact, I think they deliberately throw food on the cats' heads.

The squirrels don't object at all.  They come and perform clean-up duty during the day.

Last night, though, I wandered into the formal dining room to admire the lights that Oz, the kids and I put up and saw something poking around the strewn seeds.  I called Oz in and grabbed the camera.  Oz wanted to go out and see what it would do if he came outside, so he opened the front door.

The opossum did what 'possums do...

... and promptly shimmied up the tree.  Oz hadn't expected that and got a kick out of the critter that he had treed.  He hadn't realized that opossums in America climbed trees, let alone that they had prehensile tails.  He knew that Australian possums (which are really possums, not opossums) had those features and did those things but hadn't realized that opossums in the USA did the same thing.

Of course, the little guy (or gal) was gone by this morning, but as Oz was getting ready to tuck M2 into bed tonight, he happened to glance out her window - our little friend was back.

It seems that we haven't left Mother Nature behind after all!  And that makes me very happy.