Turtle talk

Had you guessed? Sharyn guessed, and perhaps I built it up too much so that maybe Lesley thought it would be more than this, [edited to say just me being foolish, yet again!] but the turtle eggs laid in the front of the house in June have finally, finally hatched out as baby turtles in September. In our case, it hasn't been like one of those National Geographic specials where there are hundreds of baby turtles emerging all at once (although maybe that part did happen and we missed it). For us, it is now a daily process of discovery -- is that a rock up ahead or is it a turtle? Thankfully we've found more alive than dead, though it is still heartbreaking to come across them once it's too late to rescue them off the street and into the woods. (The black stuff on Dean's hands, by the way, is paint from a school project and is not turtle-related.) They are perfect little ancient-looking things, fragile yet resilient, ready to make the long walk down to the river. I hope all this rain has helped them.
I was marveling the other day at how rich a wildlife summer it has been, and I was wondering why all of a sudden we've got so many creatures active in our yard so far this year. Coyote, turkeys, snakes, rabbits, toads, turtles, chipmunks, deer, bats, and more different birds than we've seen before, including gorgeous flocks of Canadian geese just recently. Then I started laughing at myself as I realized that in all likelihood this is no different than any other year; what's different is that we are outside in our yard and on our street for about 2 hours every day now since we have a dog to walk. These wonders have been out there all along, but we've missed most of them because we used to spend time outdoors in nature by getting into the car and driving away from our house and our street and going someplace else to walk and observe and admire. Makes me feel better about all that time that's "wasted" in dog walking....