The good, the bad, the ugly........

The good.............. there was a peacock in the yard yesterday... beautiful male with the bright blue and green coloring and feathers...... he started out by the pond, made his way up through the front field, and when my husband took his picture, the peacock was walking around our gazebo. Gorgeous bird.... don't know where he came from, and don't know where he was heading (probably on the look-out for a mate).  I looked around the property today, but didn't see him.

The bad...... this morning, I let Sweet Pea out into the yard. I've been doing that from time to time, letting him out for about half an hour every morning so he doesn't get too crazy in the house.  Usually, Sweet Pea walks around the house and the cottage for a little while, realizes that the barn swallows don't like him and start dive-bombing his little cat self, and then I will call his name and he comes running up to the back door and is very happy to come back inside to a never-ending supply of fresh water and cat food.

This morning, however.... Sweet Pea didn't come back when I called him.  I walked all around the property from the house to the cottage, I looked inside the garage, inside the barn...... I went upstairs to the balconies and looked out over the fields. No sign of that cat.  Back outside and I started to call him again.... I heard the tiniest of meows coming from underneath the porch steps out back by the deck.  I called his name again, and the same little meow came out. Definitely Sweet Pea, but why wasn't he coming out?

That's when I heard the distinct sound of a snake moving in the crispy leaves under there. Sweet Pea must have heard the snake, gone under the steps to investigate, and either the snake had him cornered or he was just too afraid to move.  Snake or no snake, I wanted Sweet Pea out of there. I stood there and called him again, and again, and again, to let him know I was right there.  Wonder of wonders, out he came, very slowly at first, and then he lunged and ended up practically wrapped around my ankles.

Gatsby was right there next to me, and as Sweet Pea came out, Gatsby went under the steps and he must have scared the snake into moving because I heard the slithering-through-the-leaves sound again, so the snake must have gone out the other side of the steps. By that time, I had Sweet Pea up in my arms and I was carrying him back to the house while he was trying to bury his head into my neck.

From now on, Sweet Pea stays in the house with Mickey.  No more look-sees out into the yard for that cat.

The ugly......  we sat down for lunch in the breakfast room today and what's on the window behind me? A tarantula. Big, black, hairy, ugly.  It had crawled up underneath the wooden frame of the screen, and was suspended between the mesh of the screen and the glass of the window pane.  Not as big as other ones I've seen on the porch, but big enough. And ugly enough to make your skin crawl.  And I know they eat mosquitoes... but I don't care. I'd rather see the mosquitoes.

My husband unscrewed the window screen and got the tarantula to move off into the garden....... last we saw it, the spider-on-steroids was sitting on a sage plant. Hopefully, it won't find its way back onto the porch and back underneath the frame of the window screen.

We're living in a zoo, I swear...... an endless array of creatures and critters, none of which I want to see. Except for the peacock--- that one was okay. And if he had stayed around the property and made himself at home by our gazebo, my husband said we would have named him "NBC."