Back Yard Safari

Greetings friends! This is The Daily Bone and I'm your attentive doggie reporter 

Chester L. W. Spaniel. 

My ghostwriter finally has a day off! So we spent most of it outside in the yard. We found a lot of interesting stuff without going anywhere, starting with this:

Look look look lookie look! Look just past the fence post, under the neighbor's umbrella shaped tree. It's a duck! We always have a few ducks checking out the greenbelt area for possible nesting sites at this time of year. But they never stay because the only pond is on the other end of the neighborhood.

Do you see him yet? He sees me now. He's hiding behind the tree trunk watching me.

Hi Mr. Mallard!

OK bye! See you next year!

Time for more exploring. Here's the compost pile. Lots of pretty blue forget-me-nots are growing behind it.

Here's the wood pile. It smells like bunnies and mousies and maybe chipmunks. I'm pretty sure there's a bunny living under the neighbor's deck. I wonder if I'll catch any bunnies this year?

We found a couple mysterious alien skulls. (Cue the X-Files Theme.)

This is a perfect dandelion poof. We sometimes see the little birdies eating the seeds from these.

Right underneath it were some tiny mushrooms growing.

Oh, and lookie here:

There's going to be a good crop from Joey's pear tree this year!

There are lots of good things to find in my yard!

One of the grackle baby gargoyles got out of its nest and is sitting on the top of the silver maple tree squawking noisily. I can't see it because of the leaves. But the parent birdies are giving me the stink eye and making threatening sounds, like, "churk churk churk churk churk churk!"

Yeah, I hear you up there!

Whew. It's hot out today! You may have noticed that there are lots of helicopters on the ground everywhere. Not those big Chinook choppers the National Guard flies around here all the time.

Photo from our archives.

But seeds from the silver maple tree. They're those yellowish-tan little things shaped like propellers. There are thousands of them! When they fall, they spin around like pinwheels through the air. The tree still has plenty more getting ready fall. 

Oh, and there is one more thing we found today. But I suggest you look at this video first.

There are several more Lucas the Spider videos on youtube if you need an extra dose of cuteness. You can even buy a Lucas the Spider Squeaky Toy!

















OK. Here's what we found by the edge of the garage door:

Do you know what it is? Ghostwriter touched it gently with the tip of a little stick and look what happened: oh oh! There they go!

This is a spider ball. A big Mommy garden spider must have made a web sac last Autumn (just like in Charlotte's Web) and laid lots of eggs in it. It managed to survive the long, cold winter, and wasn't eaten by any birdies. Now the eggs all hatched. Pretty soon all of these tiny spiderlings will go off on their own all over the garden to build webs and catch all kinds of nasty mosquitoes and flies! Hooray!

As you may know, we're all science geeks in my family, and think spiders are amazing. We never kill the spiders we find inside the house. We catch them and put them outdoors when the weather is warm. If it's winter, we simply let them go where ever they want.

And now, at the end of the day, I can finally see the moon, even though it's a bit cloudy, and howl a hello to my dearest Princess Leah. I hope things are well with you and your family across the Pond!

I can't wait for our performance on May 28!

But I might not make it to the amusement park that day due to ghostwriter's tight schedule.