Critters

Since I seem to be artistically blocked (it's cabin fever, for sure, a rural, end of winter malady) I thought I would continue with vignettes from my life in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

Living in the mountains, we are subject to many visitors of the four legged variety, even in town. The above, aged, Polaroid is of a little visitor who caught my husband and me quite by surprise, along with our dog and cat, one bright summer morning as I came into the kitchen for coffee. I found our dog, Shauna, and our cat, Hattie, sitting in front of our stove, dead still, staring, with all interest in morning chow abandoned.

We assumed, of course, that it was one of the many mice that find their way into our home and started moving the stove in an effort to flush it out. Imagine our surprise when, as the stove came away from the wall, a little masked face made a hesitant appearance. Our baby raccoon had come in through my studio, using the cat entrance in the screen door, and had found it's way into the kitchen.We put our animals in another room, moved the stove out another few feet and watched as the little guy made his way back out to my studio and out the door.

We've had baby raccoons stuck in our cellar while Shauna took it upon herself to chase Mom down the drive, skunks that have chased me back into the house in the morning as I was headed to my car to go to work, red tail hawks feasting on mourning doves on the lawn and the occasional white tail deer that comes through foraging for sweet grass and tender young leaves.

However, the most unusual visitor came last week in the evening as my daughter, Deb and granddaughter, Sarah were helping me bake cookies. Just as Debbie was opening the oven and the sweet smell of baking wafted into the kitchen, the outside door blew open and my husband's daughter, Angela and Hattie the cat literally shot into the room in equal states of agitation. It seems that there was a very large possum in the yard, and since Angela had never seen one (nor Hattie, they are almost nonexistent in this area) they were both sufficiently "freaked out" to consider a quick retreat the best course of action.

It ended up under our car and my husband had to prod it out with a pole in order to take Ms. Hattie to the vets.