Category Archives: michigan critters

tgif – a sunny friday four

Just a quick check-in today as this week has been a doozy at work and I have meetings right up until 5pm today that will likely run over.

1. The red squirrel has moved into the deluxe birdhouse thankyouverymuch.

2. The weather here in Southeast Michigan this week has been really nice. It’s hit the 50’s several days with copious sunshine, and we’ve lost most of our snowpack. It’s still cold at night so I am loving the humidifier and fuzzy sheets but the break in the winter weather has been enjoyable for everything except for my sinuses and allergies.

3. Brandon & I got out for an afternoon of cross-country skiing last weekend, just on the cusp of the warmer weather. It was my first time so I spent a fair amount of time on my ass but at the end of it I’d sort of gotten the hang of it. And really enjoyed it. I would love to do more next winter. An afternoon of strenuous activity and sunshine after a period of cold and sloth was just what I needed.

4. My folks got their first Covid vaccine this week and I am so relieved. So far their aftereffects are minimal so fingers crossed that their second shot in a few weeks is as smooth.

I am happy it’s Friday and I am looking forward to Chinese takeout tonight and hopefully more nice temperatures and sunshine. What are you up to? Whatever it is, I hope you have an excellent weekend with your special ones.

build a nest

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The kiddo had a snow day today which was utterly ridiculous. It’s been such a mild winter that there haven’t been many snow days and I think everyone just so badly wanted a day that they pounced – our district called it before the first flake even fell. Now at noon, there is MAYBE a wet inch on the ground and bare pavement still to be seen. Miss L is thrilled, off with her neighborhood friends to enjoy it (although I doubt there’s even enough for a sad snowman), and I’m working from home with my three faithful four-legged colleagues, Emmett, Sarge, and Josie, and catching up on some blogging on my lunch hour.

I’m not going to argue that a day to downshift hasn’t been appreciated. It’s been a busy couple of weeks with Miss L’s play rehearsals, school tasks, dance classes and now Girl Scout Cookie season in full swing. Miss L has been finishing up picking up and delivering cookies, we had a booth last weekend and two more this weekend.

In other news, I have a new favorite toy. I finally made good on my promise to get a trail cam – I got this one from Amazon. (Note: you’ll see a preponderance of five star reviews which may sway you that it’s the best thing since sliced bread – caveat emptor that inside the packaging, the savvy seller promised an Amazon gift card to everyone who left a five star review. That said, although the feedback is probably more flattering than what I would dispense, it’s been a good little camera for the price.) As a result – meet Paczki the yard possum. (For you non-Michiganders, it’s pronounced “Poonchkey” and it is a very popular Fat Tuesday bakery item and the best ones come from Poland or, if you can’t get your hands on a pack of those, then definitely Hamtramck – the pastries not the possums).

I’m catching up on a lot of NPR Fresh Air episodes via podcast and they reviewed an album by jazz guitarist Jeff Parker which I had to get. Post title is from the first track, featuring vocals by his daughter Ruby Parker, and the lyrics seem fitting for a faux snow-day.

“everyone moves / like they’ve someplace to go / build a nest and watch the world / go by slow. / A wise one told me / they were disconsolate; / there are no trapdoors / if you believe in fate.”

in which nature encroaches

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Sometimes I have to remind myself that I live in the city. Metro Detroit is stuffed full of people and cars and noise and even though I have a green yard and big pine trees and a nice view of an imposing verdant hedgerow across the street, sometimes I just have to remind myself.

Particularly when I lovingly nurture sunflower seeds into little baby plants, protecting them from the changing weather conditions of winter into spring, guarding them with mesh wire until they have grown into mature plants, and then, when I am finally expecting large sunshiny heads, the damn deer eat the tops off. ALL THE TOPS. I live in a TOWN. Where do the deer SLEEP in town?? Or do they bus in from neighboring country sides?

Particularly when I am standing at my kitchen sink in the evening, doing dishes and watching my birdbath garden (now mostly weed-choked) and I see a rustling in the bushes and a bit of white tail. I peer closer, thinking it is a neighborhood cat come to press its butt against my den window and wreak havoc with my two overly sensitive, Prozacked cats. And then out walks a GINORMOUS SKUNK.

Particularly when I notice a terrible stink in the garage, and attribute it to the trash. I was at Jax’s house on trash day last week, so it didn’t get taken out. And I get up on trash day this week and put on my jammies and my pink slippers, and stagger downstairs to pull the trash out to the curb. And when I yank on the overflowing can and see behind it A DEAD CHIPMUNK. The same chipmunk, perhaps, that in less-dead days would hide in my garage and sit on the edge of my recycling bin and mock me. I don’t know how he met his demise but he’d been dead for awhile and was hosting a variety of Hakuna Matata. I stood there in my jammies with my hair corkscrewed from sleep and wondered if I could leave him there til he was just a little flatter. Of course you can’t, I reasoned, you and your CHILD use this garage, this DEAD CHIPMUNK is mere feet away from her little pink bicycle. So I picked up a shovel and gritted my teeth and scraped it off the floor, displacing all aforementioned Hakuna Matata, and carried his dangling sad corpse down to the bin at the curb. Then I felt embarrassed that the trash man would see a dead thing in my bin (which led me to wonder, in my sleep-fuzzed state, what is the worst thing the trash man has seen in a bin?) and went back to rearrange a bag of kitty litter over the top to make it less obvious.

We named the skunk Roscoe.

sentence per picture, memorial day edition, with a 1-sentence ‘bleep my brother says’ bonus.

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I’ve been so sick for the past two weeks with bronchitis and sinus infection, swallowing fistfuls of antibiotics and steroids every day; yet I finally felt better and continued my running rehab program – with a post-run wallow on the sunny riverbank.

I was super thrilled to find a morel growing in my own garden; then everyone warned me that it might not be real so, afraid of dying ignominiously from mushroom poisoning, I didn’t eat it.

Although I think the cardinals moved their nest to a quieter locale, there are still nests and babies in my yard.

The stained glass window behind Sarge made me sing “Take Me to Church” to him, which 1) he didn’t get, and 2) made me think I’ve been spending too much time alone with my cats, based on the amount of hilarity I received from this.

Friday night I was standing at my kitchen sink, listening to WRCJ’s evening jazz, when I happened to look up and see this standing under my birdfeeder staring at me.

On Saturday night, Sarge climbed the back screen door, scolding, and when I investigated, our visitor had returned and was placidly consuming the neighbor’s flowers. In response to my posting of this photo on FB, my brother wrote severely, “You should tell them they need to leash their ungulates…”

Six Ten

of this be sure: you do not find a happy life, you make it.