Did I really want to know?

I know it's a disappointment to my relatives, but when they ask, I have to say honestly, I don't remember a lot about my childhood.

"What do you remember about living near Eldorado?" they ask. Nothing except maybe playing outside the house. I was only three and a half years old when we moved from there to Hawkeye.

But one of my cousins who with her older sister, often babysat us and entertained us when we visited their parents' home as children, kept all the letters I wrote to her when she was away at college and even when she attended Girls' State as a junior in high school.

Yes, it will date me, but the stamps on the first letters I wrote to her, cost just 8¢. Wow.

Oh, are those letters filled with exciting tidbits!

Perhaps more than anything, the letters revealed a lot about my childhood that I had forgotten. Like finding 31 chicken eggs in a hog feeder. And I thought only my silly hens we keep now, did such crazy things as to lay anywhere but in their coop. It appears it's something that's been going on for decades!

It makes me grimace to read that I thought it newsworthy to tell my older cousin that the family dog would celebrate his birthday that month .... or that I was writing my cousin for the second time in two weeks, because my sister had nothing to say!

Ahh, youth!  Glad to have left it behind!

Bluebirds, deer & cooper's hawks, Oh, My!

Excuses for not blogging lately .... uh, the weather's been too nice? Well on some days anyway!

Although we saw our first robins weeks ago, today there were quite a few in our yard – still migrating birds though, none that have yet decided to stay. I witnessed two male and one female bluebirds as well, today. And that bad girl, "Clucker," has returned to her mischievous ways and laid two pretty blue-green eggs outside the chicken coop – I found them under the front porch.

Spring is definitely in the air in Lima!

I have awakened several mornings the past week to find four to six deer lounging in the pasture just behind our house. The whitetails calmly listen to the bluejays bickering around them as they move their jaws in a rhythm that is reminiscent of our dairy cows chewing their cuds.

Just last week, we saw a buck with the group who had not yet shed its antlers. I haven't seen that particular male this week, unless he's finally left his rack behind somewhere.

Last week, we had a number of unwelcome visitors to our yard. No, there were no skunks. But one of the biggest raccoons I've seen waddled out of the pasture and into our yard to sample sunflower seeds under the feeder. 

It was still daylight, so he/she must have been hungry.  An hour later (it was now dark) a clank on the front porch alerted us to a younger raccoon feasting on cat food, shoveling it in as quickly as it could. The raccoon in the photo is titled, "Did you lose a cat?" and I couldn't resist posting it, even though I'm quite sure it's been altered!

But back to my story. Worse yet, was the day the Cooper's hawk dined at our bird feeder. If you don't already know, these birds are most fond of their own kind. Yes, they eat other birds. I was writing a story on my laptop when I heard a bird clunk hard against our large picture window. Looking up, I saw a few downy red feathers floating to the ground. By the time I got to the window to check on the cardinal's well-being, he was shaking off his concussion. My relief was short-lived. Because in the next moment, the Cooper's Hawk had descended on the cardinal who didn't know up from down due to his collision with my not-so-clean window. I banged both hands on the windows, but the hawk cocked its head my direction, and as I began to crank out the window, he took off, the cardinal in its talons.

Ugly.

While I'm aware coopers need to eat too ... I'd prefer their tastes run more toward poor man's lobster (i.e. sparrows.) We have a lot more of those to spare.