We chased after him, around and around, for a few minutes. Every now and then the little critter would jump practically straight up in the air as if he had a springboard that popped under him. Finally, he had exhausted his options and decided to concede. As I had him cornered, I sent the almost four year old into the house after my camera which of course took ridiculously long, but I just simply couldn’t trust her to hold my prisoner new friend still.  Anyways for that ridiculously long time the little furry brown ball with a long tail sat there and stared at me with his cute little black button eyes and twitched his brown pom-pom nose at me.

Finally, the preschooler emerged from the house with that all important means of obtaining proof.  After getting several photos we allowed our captive to return to the meadow that he came from and we headed back inside and did some research until we found out what he was.

 Meet Henry, the Meadow Jumping Mouse.

Eastern Fox Squirrel

Anyways, because I have such a large community of them, they are an almost constant source of entertainment for us.  Today especially!  First we watched one trying to get ahold of my suet basket; picture one little paw on the edge of the green seed feeder and one wrapped tightly around the black shephard’s pole, straddling in a “t formation” between the two attempting to swing his hind legs up to the basket.  All the while, looking at us through the window quizzically as if to say ‘whatta ya’ looking at?”

Ok, but the best was one actually jumped up on our schoolroom window ledge, stretched up and put it’s paws up on the glass and stared in at us for several moments.  They are getting more and more daring; no longer are they running from us when we beat on the window pane to try and get them off the feeders. Imagine a mother and three children all yelling at the top of their lungs while beating upon the glass, and three little puny squirrels staring at us completely unthreatened.

In addition to the squirrel antics, we were blessed to get a great view of a Pileated Woodpecker flying through the woods and landing in the trees right in view of our school window.  This bird is so big, you just can’t miss him!  And we don’t get to seem them very often.  Too fast for me to get a photo.

Today, has just in general been a great nature watching day.  The birds have been especially vocal today.  Funny how, when the sun is shining all of nature seems more happy!  After days of terrential rains and cold temps, I sure know that I am.  I was looking for a poem to read this morning and found this perfectly fitting one.

The Rainy Morning

by James Whitcomb Riley

The dawn of the day was dreary,

And the lowering clouds o’erhead

Wept in a silent sorrow

Where the sweet sunshine lay dead;

And a wind came out of the eastward

Like an endless sigh of pain,

And the leaves fell down in the pathway

And writhed in the falling rain.

I had tried in a brave endeavor

To chord my harp with the sun,

But the strings would slacken ever,

And the task was a weary one;

And so, like a child impatient

And sick of a discontent,

I bowed in a shower of tear-drops

And mourned with the instrument.

And lo! as I bowed, the splendor

Of the sun bent over me,

With a touch as warm and tender

As a father’s hand might be;

And, even as I felt its presence,

My clouded soul grew bright,

And the tears, like the rain of morning,

Melted in mists of light.