Spring is here.

My cat comes and goes through a kitty door, and she often deposits trophies she's caught outside. This was on the floor under my purse this morning.

What a treat! I love snakes and like everything else, the babies are even cuter. Here Mixie dashes away from my camera as I was shooting the little spring harbinger this morning.

It was hard to get a shot if that tiny flickering forked tongue, you have to be fast.

The only babies I ever catch are these little brown guys and beautiful green vine snakes. I imagine a baby King Snake or Black Rat Snake would be too beautiful; I wouldn't be able to turn one loose.
He has a few nicks but I turned this one loose outside up a tree and hoped that the cat wouldn't bring him back (as she has been known to do). So far so good.

I love having animals around, specifically I love having weird animals around. I miss my chickens Mildred, Suzie, Dottie and Betty and I miss Pumpkin. Pumpkin was my 'possum I "adopted" years ago. It will take one LONG blog post to tell all about her. Mayhaps a story for another day. For now I'll just say when she was a baby she lived in my sports bra and was fed my sister's breast milk for weeks. I took her everywhere, even up on three decks of scaffold when I was restoring Charlotte's historic Radcliffe Flowers building. And she was probably the only 'possum who got warm baths and Bath & Body "Sweet Pea" lotion rubbed onto her tail afterward. She was a very pampered marsupial.
I am so happy to see Spring come rolling in, the days are getting longer, the weather is getting warmer and I can open my doors all day and crack my window open all night. Little critters are everywhere. Time to start keeping my eyes peeled for roadkill that may be survived by hungry baby Virginia Opossums!
Pictures to follow if I find any...