CREATURE FEATURE - "Halloween or Thanksgiving?"

I wasn't planning on posting again today, but about an hour ago I happened to notice Remy (my cat) going crazy looking at something outside the kitchen window.  I glanced out to see what had caught his attention, and to my suprise, saw 3 wild turkeys right in my side yard!  They were kicking the leaves around, and apparently eating something on the ground.  I just looked up wild turkeys and found out that they eat insects, berries, nuts, and seeds.  So they were perhaps eating acorns from our trees.  What an awesome site!  And not one that I had expected to see on Halloween!



My first wild turkey sighting!

 


Turkey time!

 


You guys better hide before Thanksgiving!



An October Winter Wonderland

 So we had a freak "nor'easter" (note the correct spelling with apostrophe) on Saturday.  I'm not really sure what nor'easter means exactly, except that it brings A LOT of snow.  When I was a kid I thought it had something to do with Easter.  That's probably one of those things I should be looking up the meaning to, except that right now I'm more interested in posting my photos of the results of this nor'easter!   


The view from my kitchen window.

  


About a ft. of snow on the deck!

 

I live in what is known as the "East Mountain" section of Scranton, which is literally just on top of the big mountain East of center city Scranton.  Since it's a much higher elevation, we tend to get much more snow than in the city.  When all was said and done, I measured about 1 FT. of snow accumulation on our back deck railings!  I am not a huge fan of snow (except for a white Christmas, which I love), but I must admit, it is incredibly beautiful!  Looking out my big kitchen window into the woods bordering our house, the effect of the snow covered branches sparkling in the light was completely magical.  It definitely gives new meaning to the holiday song, "Winter Wonderland"!   



"Winter Wonderland" in my backyard



The wildlife must have also been enjoying this "winter wonderland", because when we woke up on Sunday, there were animal tracks all across the backyard.  I am obsessed with animals and the wildlife around our house.  I'm thinking these are maybe raccoon tracks since the raccoons have been on our back deck during the night lately.  I know they are supposed to be somewhat ferocious, but they are just sooo darn cute!    




Animal tracks crossing over the backyard.

 


Maybe raccoons?

 The storm also brought the return of one of my favorite birds...the Dark Eyed Junco.  They are plump little black birds with white bellys.  They won't come to the feeder, but they love to eat seeds and insects on the ground.  My husband threw some seeds out on the deck and sure enough, within 5 minutes we had about 10 juncos dining al fresco.  I read somewhere that they spend summer vacation in Canada and come back down to the northern states during the winter, which would explain why we haven't seen them since the spring. 

Dark Eyed Junco

Juncos at the buffet.

And So A Blog Was Born

So the other day I was thinking..."I really enjoy writing.  Maybe I should start a blog."  And then I spent every hour of the past week trying to coming up with a catchy name.  I thought about names at work.  I thought about names in the shower (that's where I do my best thinking).  I thought about names at 3:24 am when I got up to pee.  I thought about names as if my blog was a ticking time bomb and the name was the code to disable it!  At one point I was debating between titles involving unicorns (which the husband instantly vetoed) vs. titles involving the various ridiculous nicknames I have for my cat.   

And then I realized...realistically, there are probably only going to be two people reading this thing (hello husband, hello mother).  So who the hell cares, I'll just make it something that amuses me.  And so a blog was born.

Who came up with the word, "blog", anyways?  It sounds like/rhymes with "log".  Which makes me think of "log legs".  Which was the terrible nickname my friends and I gave to the bitchy blonde bimbo in our college major who had an unfortunate case of cankle (I know it sounds mean, but she deserved it.  Really).  Hmm...did I really just google "cankle" to check spelling?  Good thing too cuz it's with a "C" and not a "K".

So this has been enjoyable.  I can think of much less fun things to do in the middle of a Nor'easter on a Saturday in October.  Did I just google spell check "nor'easter"?  You bet I did...who knew there was an apostrophe in there?