It might have been a day in which I got a lot done, but it was not one in which I left myself a whole lot of time to do 500 to 1,000 thoughtful and insightful words for this blog. (I’m trying to “clear the decks” of as many tasks as I can in preparation for the big November plans!)
So, have some “emergency” critter pictures from the archives!
I’ve got to admit, opossums freak me out just a little.
They don’t do much for Jessie, either. I don’t know if it was this one or another one, but there was a night when she went out just before bedtime to do her business and cornered a mama opossum with a handful of young ones. The babies were hanging tight to mama’s back, mama couldn’t make it up into the tree and was trapped on the ground in the corner. Jessie was “poofed” and going bananas, trying to wake up half the neighborhood. Mama opossum might have been out of her weight class, but there was no way she was letting Jessie near her babies without it being over her dead body. I was just trying to get close enough to Jessie to grab her collar and yank her back without even further freaking out the opossum and having her try to bite me. She had a lot of very sharp looking teeth.
These guys also drive Jessie nuts, deliberately taunting her and playing “chicken” to see if she can catch them. (She can’t.) There have been multiple occasions over the years where we’ll find dead ones, apparently dying of either a fall or some kind of disease. Jessie leaves them alone, either because she instinctively knows they’re diseased or (more likely) she’s scared of them because they’re not acting “right”. Even when she’s found them hurt and unable to get away or get up into the trees, she’ll leave them alone. But if they’re “acting like squirrels”, then she goes nuts, doing her part to “act like a dog” in return.
Red-tailed hawks are all over the region and they’re so great to watch. There are a couple of pairs that we see regularly, often accompanied by a half-dozen crows trying to “mob” them.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 