Saturday, October 04, 2008
. . . are the wild turkeys on the side of the road,
the fox in our backyard,
the possum eating tomatoes in our garden,
the racoons climbing on the Dairy Queen dumpster,
the woodpeckers knocking on our house,
the owl perched on the neighbor's roof,
the deer eating grass at the school,
the bright red cardinals that live in our pine tree,
the bats and the lightning bugs on late summer nights,
the hawk in our tree,
the squirrel in our pumpkin,
and the baby birds on our front porch.
I've never lived in a place where you can see so many animals in their natural habitat so easily. I mean, once when I was in college, on one of my first dates with Mark, we were driving in Provo Canyon and I saw a racoon. . . yeah, two seconds before I made the little sucker road kill. It was so upsetting, I was certain Mark would never ask me out again. Cause you know, who would want to date a murderer?!
But here, you don't have to kill them in order to see them, although we get some pretty good roadkill around here. Mark says it's because Connecticut is one of the most heavily wooded states in the country. And we're definitely loaded with trees--we can hardly see the sky we're so "wooded." Whatever the reason, I love it. Last night we went out pretty late, in search of a Wii for Christmas. Those are harder to come by out here than a sighting of a wild turkey, no kidding. We told the boys they could not bring their Nintendo DS's and that they'd have to entertain themselves by actually staring out the window, heaven forbid! So on our way to Toys R Us I started mentioning some of the things I love about living in CT. Mark just recently got a temporary job transfer to Utah. He'll still work from CT but should he like the position, there's a very good chance he could stay permanently. And we all know what that would mean. Now don't get me wrong. I like Utah. It's nice. But I love CT and leaving would definitely break my heart. So I've been comparing and contrasting the two for the past couple of days and was sharing my list with Mark as we drove. That peeked the kids' interest, especially when Mark said he saw a coyote on that exact same stretch of road not too long ago. Immediately the kids were seeing things moving in the wooded area just off the road and were buzzing with excitement wondering what we might see.
We didn't see anything on our way there but on our way home, sure enough, we came across a possum, crossing the road. We slowed down, rolled down the windows and all of the boys got to see a real live possum for the first time. Did I mention we saw about eight deer prior to that? The kids were thrilled and Hunter suggested we go on late night drives once a month just to see what else we could see. As I tucked Denver in bed he said, "Mommy, I don't know what to write for weekend news. That we made a cemetery in our garden this weekend or that I saw a possum." Clearly, the kids enjoy it as much as I do.
And then there was the other day, as I was walking Hunter up to his first orchestra rehearsal. There were two deer on the school lawn munching the grass. Several people had stopped to watch, so we did too. A few minutes later one deer got frisky with the other deer and the crowd watching started giggling nervously. Afterall, we were there with our kids. Hunter thought it was hilarious so he shouted out to the first friend he saw that hadn't seen the whole thing, "We just saw a deer try and get a piggy back ride from another deer!" The adults in the crowd chuckled a little harder and I probably turned a brighter shade of red. Hunter's had "the talk." Trust me, he knows how babies are made. But I love that he had no idea what was really going on. Afterall, he does still believe in Santa. But where else would this happen on a Tuesday night at 6:45pm? I really love it. I love that many of Caleb's first words were "baby deer" and "whoa turkey!" I love that the kids talk about the racoons we saw at DQ and ask me to wake them up next time I see a fox. I love living so close to "The City" but feeling like I live next door to Laura Ingalls. I love it and should we ever move, it would be one of the things I'd miss the most.
posted by Shana # 11:22 PM 
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