One of the things that has surprised me the most about life in our new house is how much wildlife we have here. I know I joke about us being out in the country, but we really aren't. We're only a few miles past the Frederick city limits, and while Frederick isn't a huge city, it is a city. Still, I could practically write a post per day about my interactions with the wildlife here.
I've written about the deer and the bugs, but there is so much more. When we had the big snowstorms earlier this year, the snow stuck around for a while. Every morning we'd wake up to more tracks crossing and crisscrossing the yard and the driveway, highlighting just how much activity goes on out there. Hoof prints and paw prints and bird tracks weaving their way back and forth in the snow.
There's a fox who lives in our woods (we think) who I typically see crossing the driveway at night. There are squirrels galore. One day recently I was coming home and there was a squirrel sitting in the middle of the driveway, clutching something in his paws and nibbling on it. I pulled up in my car and he gave me an irritated look and moved a couple of feet farther down the drive. I inched forward and he looked at me, then moved a couple of more feet. Finally, after the third time I got near him, he glared at me and took off into the woods.
Something helped itself to tuna can out of the recycling bin. My money is on the raccoon John saw amble down the front steps, across the front walk and into the woods.
We had a full on, Winnie-the-Pooh-style bee's nest in the bushes between the house and where we park our cars. John dealt with that one. If I look out the window to the back yard, I'm almost guaranteed to see two or three butterflies dancing around. Of course there are also a lot of gnats, which aren't nearly as charming.
There are bunnies, of course. And birds. I don't know much about birds, but we have a hawk I see pretty regularly, the woodpeckers, cardinals and blue jays. Plus plenty of others I can't identify, including one that makes noise exactly like R2D2, and some bird that very insistently kept trying to build a nest on our front porch.
About a month ago I looked out into the back yard and there was a mama deer calmly nibbling on a tree at the edge of the woods while her very tiny, very young fawn raced in circles around her, zooming into the trees and then tearing back out of the woods at her.
Just on Wednesday what we think was a groundhog (it looked kind of like a squirrel on steroids) snuffled around on our front steps for a bit before disappearing off somewhere.
I think my favorite story is this one though, although technically it happened in my neighborhood but not at my house. Last fall I was driving home after dark. It was one of those dramatic, windy nights with a full moon lighting up the sky. Something flashed on the side of the road, catching my eye, and I slowed down, just in time to see a mouse run in front of my car, followed by a big, fat marmalade cat. The mouse stopped on the double yellow line, the cat swiped at it with a paw, then snatched it up and continued on his way across the road. It was like something you'd see on the Serengeti, only in miniature. And sad for the mouse, of course, but also kind of magical.
