A Backyard Visitor

We had our first backyard visitor the other day. Yes, the fuzzy tailed rodent menace found us and pranced right into our very own backyard.

Shaak Ti saw the squirrel from her perch on the second story window and flew downstairs like she was shot out of a cannon. She hoped that at long last she could have her very own squirrel pet. Sadly it was not to be.




After 20 minutes or so of circling the tree, whining relentlessly, and barking like the crazy dog that she is, she finally gave up. I did go outside myself, proud that my firstborn had finally done something productive and treed her first squirrel. Truth be told, I also wanted visual confirmation that there was actually a squirrel in the tree and she wasn't barking at specters, a phantom squirrel from the great beyond....





There was also some concern that she would hurt her neck from craning it skyward for so long, though I'm sure that would have been fine with her if she could have reached the squirrel prize up there in it's leafy Cracker Jack box. She was OK though. Two minutes after coming back in the house she had forgotten all about her almost squirrel prize and set to destroying her new favorite toy.



This final picture is my favorite, she looks like a tiny Lipizzaner Stallion, perched up against the tree. You may be asking yourself - What the hell is a Lipizzaner Stallion? and how the hell does John know that that is? Well I'll tell you faithful reader.

The Lipizzaner Stallions are some special kind of white horse from Spain (or Portugal or some place like that). The tour around, and for a fee you can sit there and watch them trot and prance around. I saw this as a small child. My sister went through a horse phase and demanded to see the Lipizzaner Stallion show when it rolled into town.

I can't emphasize to you, dear reader how brutally painful and boring this was a small child, to sit for hours and watch these pretentious horses trot around in circles. It made synchronized swimming look like a monster truck rally.