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When I was eight(ish), my family moved to a new house, and this led to a certain amount of sibling-supervised outdoor playtime (thanks starandrea!) in an unfamiliar area. Mostly what I remember is our mom telling us to stay out of one particularly swampy part, because there were snakes there.

At the time, this made perfect sense to me. I'm sure it was like the quicksand thing -- of course there would be a swamp full of snakes, why wouldn't there be??? Probably pretty common, really! Very sensible to avoid them when possible.

In retrospect, it makes almost no sense, because none of us were scared of snakes, and also there were not snakes. (Possibly our mom thought I would get lost, which is -- not unlikely, knowing me. Also, the swamp part was very true, so there was a lot of potential for A) getting very dirty, and B) slipping and getting hurt, so it's not like it was bad advice overall.)

(Fun facts I learned in the course of writing this post: New Hampshire has only one species of venomous snake -- the timber rattlesnake. They are considered 'critically imperiled' and protected by law. They do not live in swamps.)

Very important turtle update: I have seen a BABY turtle! I was taking my walk on Tuesday morning, and as I approached the far end of the street, there was a little bitty baby turtle in the road!

*Of course, I did not have my phone with me. Still no photo evidence!

*This one was on the danger side of the road (where cars would be driving into the turnaround), and was v. smol (smaller than my palm!). It was also not exactly crossing the road; more like chillin’ in the road. I was concerned.

*So you better believe I MOVED THAT TURTLE. (Like a foot, over to the grass.)

*I did try to encourage it to move on its own first, first by awkwardly crowding it and then by poking it gently. When neither of those worked, I just picked it up (carefully!).

*It seemed fine with turtling off into the grass after that. GOOD LUCK, BABY TURTLE!

*Yes, Mom, I washed my hands afterwards. :)

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Had an excellent walk in the woods this weekend!

*Saw a Baltimore Oriole! (Okay, I saw a bright orange-red non-cardinal bird swoop by and took a guess.) Also a pileated woodpecker! (Very sure on this one. ‘Does it look like a woodpecker, but sized like a crow?’) And a heron!

*Did not see a turtle. After all this time, am beginning to think the ‘turtle viewing area’ sign may be a joke.

*Saw a toad and a snake! (Not together. Both of them startled me, though. The toad was quite graceful about it — hopped to the side of the trail and then just chilled out. The Very Small snake and I were the opposite of graceful. It was sunning itself on a trail bridge, and I didn’t notice until I was almost on top of it. At which point I did a super awkward ‘don’t step on the snake’ dance step, and it flung itself off the bridge into the marsh. Not either of our best moments.)

*Saw a deer! Very classic.

*Lots of mosquitoes. Some ticks. Way too many gypsy moth caterpillars.

*Saw three Good Dogs. (Including the Chinook!)

In conclusion: it was great!

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The red berry wreath is GONE! I hardly recognize our floor without it. It was a staunch companion for such a long, long, long, long, long time. I miss it already!

But I suppose this is a signal that winter is finally truly over. Other key indicators:

*I finally took the snowshoes out of my car.

*We’ve had the first day of the year that I didn’t take a coat to work.

*Groundhogs and robins everywhere. (Awww…)

*I heard someone complaining it was too hot outside.

*Bugs.

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Work! I am going there today!

This picture has nothing to do with work, or Wednesdays, although I suppose an argument could be made that safety is always important.

But hey, check it out — wordpress is properly crossposting to dreamwidth again! That time-honored strategy of ‘do nothing and hope it fixes itself’ has come through yet again!

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In this case, it’s going to be the landlord. Not quite as exciting as the ghostbusters, but on the other hand, I’m not really ready for the excitement of a ghost mouse in my wall.

(Honestly, not ready for the excitement of a regular mouse either. But I didn’t get a readiness survey before it moved in, so it may not know that.)

Yes, a mouse has returned. (I hope it’s only one.) I’m not really sure what the landlord can *do* about it, since I don’t think the mouse is entering the wall in my apartment. (I’m on the middle floor, so it could have access above or below my apartment.) And it’s not actually *in* the apartment proper, so it’s not like I can put out a trap or something.

But I can’t sleep with it rustling around in the wall *right next to my bed* (ugh), so I am hoping Something Can Be Done. (I’ve already dragged the mattress into the other room, so I did manage to sleep last night.)

Oh, nature.

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[more about Boom]

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So it turns out I’ve fallen a few days behind on both posting and nano-novel-ing. One of those seems far easier to get caught up on than the other. In that spirit, here are some fun Florida vacation notes!

1. I love penguins. If you didn’t know me as a small child, you might not know that exciting fact about me, so I thought I’d lead with it. And guess what Sea World has? PENGUINS. (Or rather, PENGUINS!!!1!!1!!)

2. It is already CHRISTMAS at Sea World. No lie, we have a picture in front of the Christmas tree.

3. We saw a CAT at Sea World too! (It was cute. And not officially part of the park exhibits.)

BONUS: *ANDREA is the MOST AWESOME and VERY GOOD at not freaking out about things like ‘but where is our BUS?!’ and ‘why is there no WATER?!’

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A+ plan for the day:

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