Quite the Life (and all in Times New Roman 10pt!)
Sometimes The Wild blesses us in ways unexpected.
Here we have an example.
Food placed in trays for raccoons is snarfed up by birds.
All sorts of birds.
Okay, not pterodactyls.
Okay, pterodactyls are not birds.
Bird wannabees, maybe?
Bird forerunners.
Yeah, that’s better. Bird forerunners.
Doesn’t matter, really.
Except I’d rather have trays full of birds than pterodactyls.
(but imagine the videos that’d make…)
Sometimes The Wild reminds us that couch potatoes are a type of many, not just Two-Leggers.
Here we have a prime example of couch potating(?).
Here we have a prime example of couch potatoing(?).
Here we have a prime example couching the potato…
Okay, these are getting worse. Let’s return to something neat and clean.
Here we have a raccoon desperately in need of a remote.
Depending on time of year…
And animal species…
Children abound.
Some are four legged, some are feathered.
Some slither and dither.
The Wild is particular about birthing young.
Generally, it likes young to have Spring through Fall to fatten, to prepare for Winter.
There are many strategies involved.
One which is not closely tied to seasons is Rabbit. Rabbit’s strategy is to have a lot of young and often.
But Rabbit doesn’t do a great job of mothering. Births occur in the open and young are left unattended while parents forage.
Not so with Brother and Mother Coyote.
Coyote protects her children fiercely.
Except around me and mine.
Somehow, we are known to be safe.
For which we’re glad.
The Wild is ever vigilant. Sleep, that deep, profound, dream-laden land of Morpheus, is forbidden The Wild by evolutionary design.
Pets are embraced by Morpheus (at least, should be. Some people don’t deserve pets) because modern pets – those not kept outside or in a barn – recognize the safety within the walls of home.
Their den, as it were.
When your cat purrs in its sleep, when your dog woofs and twitches, when your bird tucks its head under a wing, it communes with its kin through all time knowing such journeys undertaken are safe.
Not so in The Wild.
There evolution forbids deep rest because deep rest equates to being prey.
Western cultured two-Leggers have only enjoyed deep sleep (many, anyway. Definitely not most or all) for perhaps the past two-hundred years, basically since the industrial revolution, when group recognition fell from village or tribe and climbed to housing project or job.
Light sleepers’ non-conscious minds remember The Wild and pay attention.
Do you?
There is mirth in The Wild. One might not think it so, especially considering the common “knowledge” that there is no intelligence in The Wild.
This from a species which has only been on the planet some 2-400,000 years.
Consider the age of most other species and we are, indeed, the new kids on the block.
But there is mirth.
Often hidden, and there.
Especially when you catch some raccoons checking out a little Boo butt.
Such shameless hussies…