It’s lovely today — the heat has broken a little bit and so when I took Raymond off for his morning dog walk, we ran into the whole gang down in the creek behind the dog park. We were yakking away when suddenly Bob said “Hey … look at that!” And there on a dead branch not 20 feet of the ground on the far side of the creek was a great big fluffy owl. At first I thought it might be a great gray, but then we saw its little horns — it was a Great Horned Owl.

So we all stood around and watched the owl for a while. And the owl watched us. And it turned it’s head in that funny way that owls do. And then the dogs started to romp, and we all moved down the trail feeling grateful that despite all else, we live in a place where the odds of seeing a large wild bird on your morning dog walk are very good.