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.
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[...] When we get to the dog park there’s a nice cool walk along the creek, with all those pleasant creek sounds. Some mornings there’s wildlife, like the owl we saw last week, or the pelicans that cruised by just below the level of the bluff earlier this summer. In the winter, there’s a pair of bald eagles who fish the river, cruising upstream, then picking up the thermal over the high bluffs on the far side. Right now there’s also a sweet chestnut foal in the horse pasture on the far side of the creek, and it was at the dog park where I met most of the people who have become my closest friends here. We’ll check in with one another, exchange the news, watch the dogs romp and go back to our little home offices for another day. [...]