{"id":99,"date":"2008-11-27T13:57:31","date_gmt":"2008-11-27T17:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogshevik.com\/garneredimages\/?p=99"},"modified":"2008-11-27T13:57:31","modified_gmt":"2008-11-27T17:57:31","slug":"thoughts-on-thanks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/?p=99","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts On Thanks"},"content":{"rendered":"

“How good a day can it be when it begins with your hand shoved up a turkey’s butt?”
\n(yours truly)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I try to live a life of thankfulness; grateful for not only the Big Good Things that come into my life, but also the myriad Small Good Things that are, in the end, part and parcel of this human existence.\u00a0\u00a0But while I hold appreciation for a day set aside solely to give thanks, being who I am, at the same time I cannot help but see the irony.\u00a0 The suffering of 45 million turkeys raised\u00a0only to be killed for\u00a0this day, the tradition of stuffing them and then ourselves\u00a0with the intention of creating little more than an after-dinner stupor so as to be properly shored up for the insanity of Black Friday Christmas shopping\u00a0more symbolic of everything wrong with our society than symbolic of gratefulness for blessings both great and small that are continually woven through our lives.<\/p>\n

And so this morning, feeling more than ever the added pressure of personal matters that have splintered my family as well as the frightening news from Mumbai, India, where reside both\u00a0coworkers and a daily photo group member, I awoke in a rather subdued, if not downright cranky mood.\u00a0 The weather has finally and seemingly gleefully gripped November’s gloom tightly with both hands and while it’s not raining – or sleeting or snowing –\u00a0on the Thanksgiving Day parade, it’s certainly doing\u00a0little to welcome a\u00a0weary heart to another new day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the furballs in residence and those living free, it’s just another day.\u00a0 And it is from them that I will take my cue and focus on the Small Good Things, letting them fill my basket until my smile returns.\u00a0 One Small Good Thing was found in reaping the benefit of patience this week.\u00a0 The majority of the truckloads of pumpkins brought in on Halloween night went into what was intended to be our own harvest-of-pumpkins garden that\u00a0had fallen\u00a0unexpected victim to some sort of blight and so since late summer had sat empty and forelorn.\u00a0 Pumpkins and squirrels make for hilarious photo ops, and I suppose that in a way it’s almost cheating to create a stage set of sorts, but we’ve all gotta eat and, by gods, a rounded diet is a healthy diet so for the seasonal-eating squirrels, if I can give them pumpkins, I will give them pumpkins.<\/p>\n

It’s taken a while for the squirrels to get into them, though.\u00a0 Until the temperature drops\u00a0and maintains\u00a0a consistent chill both night and day they continue to mainly forage and bury, wisely leaving most of the nutritious seeds safe\u00a0and secure in their natural container.\u00a0 But\u00a0eventually opening day arrives, and I grab Matilda and go out back to have some annual fun.<\/p>\n

These fall pumpkin shots are always bursting with color and when we received a short but wet, ground-covering\u00a0snowstorm a few days ago\u00a0it lent a unique and brighter dimension.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pine squirrels have been very loudly out in force, and their tiny size allows them to easily dart in and out of the opened pumpkins.\u00a0 Their lightning-speed darting, however, makes it difficult to get a good shot unless they momentarily focus their wee minds on actually gathering the seeds instead of fending off their larger competition,\u00a0 both real and more often imagined.\u00a0 In bad late afternoon light early this week\u00a0I watched as three of them were having a late supper in the pumpkin bed, but as soon as I brought out Matilda, every single one of them took off and never returned.\u00a0 I was disappointed but determined, so kept an eye out for them and finally was able to catch one of them in the act:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I write this, everyone has started getting into the act and yesterday’s daily was of Titan in action.\u00a0 The boy has grown up to be one fine specimen of a fox squirrel, and\u00a0he’s certainly eating well!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Being (allegedly) on vacation this week, I was able to make the requisite mad dashes outside when the ‘hood hawks made their daily hunting rounds.\u00a0 Unlike the brightness of the color on the ground, shooting raptors against the gloomy grey sky continues to prove more practice than productive, but when both the Cooper’s hawk and the red tail hawk showed up within a few hours of one another, it made for very exciting and very fun afternoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Coop appeared first and it was “stick-picking” time from the back patio, aiming three doors down.\u00a0 It’s distance from my vantage point allowed for a wider f-stop,\u00a0and the shallow depth-of-field\u00a0resulted in not-too-shabby a capture, especially considering the lack of light.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The red tail was a hungrier and a far less-cooperative subject.\u00a0 I\u00a0became a hunter hunting a hunter and ended up following it clear to the end of our block trying to get just one “ok” shot to record its visit.\u00a0 Every time it would land, I’d hurry over to what seemed like a decent position but by the time I set down the tripod and quickly\u00a0began to focus, it would head off to another tree.\u00a0 So I’d pick up and move again.\u00a0 And again.\u00a0 And again.<\/p>\n

You get the picture.\u00a0 This is the only half-way decent one I got:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But life’s much more about the journey than the destination so today I’m\u00a0thankful that I have such opportunities in my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“How good a day can it be when it begins with your hand shoved up a turkey’s butt?” (yours truly) \u00a0\u00a0 I try to live a life of thankfulness; grateful for not only the Big Good Things that come into my life, but also the myriad Small Good Things that are, in the end, part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/squirreltale.com\/garneredimages\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}