Critter cam

Winter seems to last here forever, but when it changed this year, it really did change.

For example, here's what it was like here on the night of April 11 ...


But then the weather got sharply warmer, with highs in the 60s. The ice on the area's lakes got thinner and thinner ...


I went to Marquette for an indoor track meet last Wednesday. I took my camera along in case I came across some critters. The critters must have slept in that day, or else they were out for lunch. But on the trip home, as the sun got lower in the sky, they came out. One field that I drove past had nearly a dozen deer, most of which were posing for me. You can see two of them running in, trying to get in place in time for the picture ...


Further down the road, with the sun lower in the sky, I came across more deer. These seemed more focused on the fresh grass in the field ...


Where I live, seeing deer is fairly commonplace. There are a lot of deer, and you have to drive cautiously when the sun is going down. Lately, there are more turkeys around, too. Here are some I saw on the same trip home ...


About a week earlier, on a trip to Iron Mountain, we saw a flock of turkeys, including a pair of big toms, those big fat ones you see in the Thanksgiving pictures the kids make in school. I stopped and was going to turn around--but there was a car behind us, and they stopped right next to the turkeys, convincing the turkeys that they better run off into the woods. Oh well!

The weather got warmer and warmer, and we quickly arrived at a major rite of spring around here: The year's first tender new grass started growing in front of the kitchen window. This a big day for one of our cats, which absolutely loves fresh grass. The other one could care less.

A few days ago we went somewhere, and on our way inside my wife picked some fresh, tender blades for the kitty's grass party. She couldn't get her jacket off before the cat got impatient ...


She did her coat off, and we went to the living room, where she sat down and held out the grass. The kitty came over to take a good sniff ...


When the grass didn't come fast enough, she hooked her paw around my wife's hand to move it closer to her ...


Once all the grass was gone, the cat got another treat. It was warm that day--it got to 84F here on Sunday!--so we opened the screen on the front door and moved one of the kitchen chairs over so she could look outside at the traffic and enjoy the fresh, exciting, new smells of spring ...


The cat doesn't know it yet, but she is in for another thrill. I'll tell you the big news in a day or so.