Time to Shed My Snake Skin I found an unwelcome surprise outside my front door a few weeks ago: a two-foot-long shed snake skin. Of course, I posted a photo on social media—not much else excitement during these days of pandemic “sheltering at home.”...
Wildlife has been especially wild lately. Although June is barely two weeks old, a decapitated rattlesnake bit a Texas man. An alligator killed a Florida woman. And in Minnesota, an unidentified wild animal killed a five-year-old boy. Last month a hungry cougar killed...
When we relocated from the northeast to Florida, one of the things we missed most was the change of seasons. Native Floridians quickly advised us that instead of winter, spring, summer, and fall, our seasons are snowbird, love bug, summer, and hurricane. While the...
I never thought a sandhill crane would make me cry. A pair of sandhill cranes were living in our little corner of the neighborhood for the last year. It seems fitting, since they happen to be the logo of our development. We’ve watched them establish a routine....
I recently returned from a writers’ conference in Estes Park, Colorado, nestled in the majestic Rocky Mountains. When we checked in, our guest packages included a flyer titled, “Be Bear Aware.” The flyer is standard issue to all guests because apparently some folks...
“Big” is relative. The smaller we are, the larger everything else appears. A few years ago, during a visit to my childhood church, I gazed in amazement at how tiny the classrooms were. I didn’t remember them being that small when I was eight years old. Basketball nets...
This week we said a painful goodbye to our second rescue boxer, Romer. Like his sister, he died just shy of his eleventh birthday. As we mourn his absence, I can’t help but wonder if we will see our pets again. I wrote about this in a blog post two years ago, when we...
Advice we’ve all heard: Expect the unexpected. But is that really possible? If we expect the unexpected, doesn’t that mean it’s no longer unexpected? To expect the unexpected is to be flexible, to be prepared for options we may not have intended to plan for. For the...
It’s been a tough few weeks for me when it comes to our four-legged friends. We had to say goodbye to our rescue boxer, Lacy, on Christmas eve. My editor for One Year Alone with God said goodbye to two of her pets this past month. And just this afternoon, a friend...
Time to Shed My Snake Skin I found an unwelcome surprise outside my front door a few weeks ago: a...
Wildlife has been especially wild lately. Although June is barely two weeks old, a decapitated rattlesnake bit a Texas...
When we relocated from the northeast to Florida, one of the things we missed most was the change of seasons. Native...