We don’t always see the animals, but we know they are there. Fortunately, the shelter at home orders have slowed down human activity enough that more animals from the Great Dismal Swamp have taken to wandering through the neighborhood. I haven’t seen a bear yet — I don’t know if that’s bad or good — though I wouldn’t be surprised if they lurked around at night.
My yard has seen a few visitors, most of them are residents, but there is one that I managed to catch in the yard at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, strolling around looking for food — a grey fox. I’m not sure if he smelled something my daughters took out and left in the yard or if he was on the trail of a rabbit. Either way, it was a bit of a natural blessing to see him wandering in my yard, almost unafraid. I say ‘almost’ because my youngest daughter (2yo) heard me clamoring for the camera and ran to the patio door, scaring him away. I had to replace the SD card in the camera and missed getting some really good shots, but I did the best I could with the iPhone.
But he wasn’t the only visitor.
We celebrated Mother’s Day with a take out dinner from Williamsburg Winery. Dinner included cupcakes with a grenadine infused icing. My eldest daughter (4yo) doesn’t like cake but will typically eat the frosting then give her cupcake to her sister. The grenadine was a no-go for her so she didn’t eat any of her cupcake. Instead, she decided to throw it out in the back yard. Not into the trees or somewhere out of the way, but right in the middle of the back yard. I was in the middle of working on something when I realized where she had thrown the cupcake. Before I finished my project, I looked out the window and a fox squirrel had decided to make a meal out of the cupcake, particularly the icing. I had my camera ready on my desk this time and managed to get a few shots. As the squirrel was munching away on the cupcake, a thrasher dropped out of one of the trees and tried to get a piece of the cupcake action, too. The squirrel wasn’t having it and chased the thrasher away. The thrasher was intimidated, but not too much. He stayed in the yard, bouncing around the squirrel, looking for any crumbs that were dropped. A few minutes later two large crows swooped into the yard and scared both the squirrel and the thrasher away. The crows seemed interested in what the squirrel was eating, but upon further investigation, apparently they, like my daughter don’t like cake and frosting with grenadine.
I left my camera setting on my desk that afternoon and night. “Fortune favors the foolish,” Kirk said in Star Trek. When I woke up the next morning, there was a rabbit at the back of the yard near the fence munching on some clover. I managed to snap a few pictures of him before he got skittish and disappeared back into the tree line. I suppose that answers my question about the fox and his quest — if he was after rabbit, he was unsuccessful.
Is there a point to this long post? An ephemeral point. The animals that share the yard with me are beautiful little souls who have no concept of the delight they bring me and my children as we watch them scurry and scamper around the back yard. They’re mostly oblivious to us when we are in the house, and I suppose we’re mostly oblivious to them, too, unless I see them while working at my desk. Those brief moments, those little sparkling diamonds throughout the day — they take my mind off of any problems (well, other than “where is my camera?!”) giving me some respite from whatever problem is vexing me. That, I guess, is the point. We get so troubled that we forget to stop and watch the natural beauty of the world around us. We take it for granted because we’ve been conditioned to focus on the problems at hand. Human endeavor can take us only so far forward before it weighs on us and brings us, if not crashing at least spiraling down. Nature is a cure for that ill — the studies are showing more and more that being out in nature is good for all of us, not just children. Maybe we should make more time to spend outside. If you really want to make it special, spend it outside with your kids — the vicissitudes of nature seen through their eyes will shock you. I know the implication of that is that it is unwelcome or unpleasant — and at first it will be. Adults have been conditioned to see things in a way that is more matter of fact, as though the only way to view life is through the scientific method. Children aren’t corrupted by that. They see the world through lenses of wonder and excitement! They explore not only because of a desire for knowledge and learning as embodied in the scientific method, but out of a desire to experience it, to *FEEL* it, both tactile and emotional. Children connect with nature in such a way that it shocks us as adults, though we experienced it that way as children, too.
How soon we forget our true nature isn’t to be automatons that produce and consume goods. Our true nature is the transcendent reality of our souls.
God bless the children.
Sauntering Photographer 