July 21, 2001

Last night nature was "red in tooth and claw" - or at least, so I believe. Around nine, there was a horrendous sound that I originally thought was an excited fox and Mel interpreted as bucks snorting, but it was followed by a series of even more horrendous screeches, so we both concluded that some critter was meeting its fate. It cannot have been a deer; they bleat; so it was probably a fox, and the predator must have been a coyote or a bear. We know there's a bear in the woods along the river at the bottom of the hill, because she visited our neighbor last spring and unloaded the latter's bird feeder while Elaine cowered on the other side of the window glass. This morning was a different thing entirely. The finches woke me playing tag. They have a way of using their wings that makes them sound like a deck of new cards being shuffled, but they're so cute I can only enjoy. Mel and I went for a walk before noon, and as we went down the road there broke out a bird song so mellifluous that we could do nothing but stop to listen. Neither of us had ever heard it before, but it was certainly bird bel canto. As we continued, the woods came alive with bird song, which I am enjoying at this moment again as sunset and the cool evening breeze bring it forth again. I stopped on the way back for a few sunwarmed blueberries from the bushes at the end of the pool, and a chipmunk scampering in one of the flower beds stopped to stare pugnaciously at Eddie and me. Yesterday, I was driving home when I passed one of my Spanish students, a cutie named Ashley, who was picking raspberries on the roadside, and she offered me one. The double day lilies are blooming and the cutting bed is a rhapsody of color and texture. Ah, summer!