A Visitation of Creatures

I know I've mentioned before how I long to have a dog. It's simply not feasible and wouldn't be fair to the poor thing if I tried, so I've resigned myself to being pet-less. But that doesn't stop me from whimpering quietly when I see pictures like this:

It occurred to me this morning, however, that when you live in the country, you really don't need a pet -- because you can share everyone else's.

My yard is a haven for numerous cats, free-range chickens, and marauding ducks. (BookMan has a wandering peacock that favors his porch as its latrine, but my neighbors aren't that classy…)

There are plenty of the larger domesticated animals to be seen -- horses and cattle grace the nearby fields (the goats are gone, alas.) Pigs, sheep, and emu, while not immediate neighbors, are not uncommon sights.

Mother Nature shares, too. Deer and rabbits plague my garden; coyotes wander the power line corridor; wild turkeys flex their slender avian muscles by stopping traffic as they leisurely cross the roads; squirrels, chipmunks, skunks, and vole burrow through my lawn. The snake has moved off my porch but he's still in evidence… And there are mice, of course. Every year, they get into my house and scritch through the walls -- and every year I put down lots of poison, to be rewarded by blissful silence -- and the occasional pong of quiet decay.

Really, I've got just about everything except dogs.

People are selfish about sharing their dogs… 

The poor things get locked up or tied up, never to come a-visiting.

*sigh*

But still, there's much to be said for the amusement factor in watching a duck run...  :-)