National Geographic - live & in your front yard

This city girl is experiencing the country life up close & personal. The state park near my home does have a member of Yogi's family in the name after all. My close encounter of a moose kind took place just after I moved to my current residence then again a few weeks later. There is a mommy bear & cub reported to have a crib somewhere in the neighborhood. Deer are usually out in the front yard at dusk or dawn or in the backyard. I nearly ran over a wild turkey & her future Thanksgiving dinners on the way home tonight. You could hear owls & coyote nearly every night where I lived previously.

Any of those animals are tolerable. There are only 2 creatures that I would prefer to avoid all together - skunk & possum. It's rather obvious why I would like to avoid the stinky skunk & possum are known to have a mean streak in them...to put it mildly. I went to take the trash out tonight & had a close encounter of the possum kind. It was just as happy to see me as I was to seeing it. I have said before that the VISTA experience extends beyond your 9-5 job but this is not quite what I had in mind. Molly just looked at it then continued sniffing around like usual...but would you expect a different reaction from her? I'm surprised she didn't ask the thing for a belly rub! I had to grab Molly, as we practiced during the previous moose encounter, & head upstairs. Now I am glad to be typing this versus getting the skunk smell off Molly while wearing a gas mask! It's those little things in life after all...