Morning Walk

Category: dribblings

Warning: This post will seem jumpy and tangential, because it is.

If you count your walks interesting in terms of how many hawk pictures you take, then this morning’s walk with Roxie was a zero. I don’t know how that happened as I’ve ALWAYS seen at least one hawk. That’s not to say that the walk was a total loss as it had some New Business for me to add to the minutes.

When I get to the park if there’s no other cars there I assume there’s no one else walking and I’ll let Roxie off her leash so she can run out some energy. This benefits the both of us. She gets to chase squirrels and feel like a she-beast, and when I get the leash back on her she’s a bit tired and won’t drag me along as much. Win-win. But today, STRAIGHT OFF she actually caught and killed a squirrel. My reaction went something like this:

“Yay Roxie! chase that- Oh God, she caught it. ROXIE! DROP IT. GET OVER HERE.”

Because she is a good dog, she dropped it and came right to me. The squirrel did not try to run away because it was already deader than hell.

“Roxie, how could you?”

“It was like that when I found it.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“Yes, it-”

“I heard it scream, Roxie. It screamed.”

So that was how the walk started out. She was pretty smug about it.

Another odd thing about today’s walk happened at Squirrel Point. This is one of the more tame names I’ve come up with for parts of the trail. Other names include Snake Bite Pond (which is only one part of the park but that’s the name I call the whole park in general.) , Murder Fields, Skeleton Alley (which Jenara came with), and Lunchroom Corner.

Right, so I was at- what? Lunchroom Corner? Oh, well see, where the walking trail meets Swamp Road (oh yeah, there’s a Swamp Road too.), you can (on a clear day, and when the city workers aren’t burning rubbish) smell the lunchrooms of the elementary and middle schools which are very close by but you can’t see them as there are much woods and trees and stuff in the way. Sometimes in the afternoon you can hear the kids on the playground or track or wherever kids play at recess.

Lunchroom corner is on the opposite side of the trail from Squirrel Point. Clear as mud, yes?

So Roxie and I were standing at Squirrel Point waiting for some kind of bird to do something. We heard a moo. Several Moos in fact. What’s this? Cows? At Snake Bite Pond? Roxie was very interested to find what creature makes that noise, but the moos were coming from Skeleton Alley and my only rule about  the whole of Snake Bite Pond is that I don’t go down Skeleton Alley by myself. Anymore. Not only because it’s really isolated from the rest of the park, but also because it’s the only place where I’ve seen a real, live snake. Oh, and the deer skull. That’s where we saw the deer skull which in turn is why we call it Skeleton Alley.

Yes, I know that a skull is only part of a skeleton. Shut up.

So, moo cows! I did not investigate on my own the whereabouts of the cows, but worry not, as soon as I get a walking partner we’re heading for Farmville. And I hope to hell we end up calling it Dairy Air or something equally awful.

The only real things of note that the Rockstar and I saw this morning were a handful of woodpeckers. Two different types. The standard red-headed woodpecker, which is huge, and I’ve taken several pictures of those. And then there was this little guy:

woody16

Which is, if I’m not mistaken, a (and this is by far the greatest bird name I’ve ever heard) Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. I know, you think I’m making that up. I’m not.

Is that not the best name?  It’s the name I’m calling everything that annoys me.

So there’s a new bird to add to my “I’ve seen that!” List.

The worst part of my walk today, besides of course the squirrel carnage at the beginning, was that one of the workers at the ballfield (Not the Murder Fields, but the nice ball field at the front of the park) got into the pressbox and I don’t know, hooked up his XM radio to the loudspeakers and played some awful country station. You could hear it across the whole place. The thing is? The jerk was using a bulldozer the whole time. There’s no way he could hear that damn music while running a bulldozer. That good-for-nothing, yellow-bellied sapsucker scared off the wildlife.

That was my morning, how was yours?

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