Reach in the magic hat and see what you pull out for today.

Welcome to the potpourri (which I mistakenly pronounced ‘pot-purry’ the first time I saw it written and then watched my mother’s ear drums balloon from her ears at the sound of such an auditory atrocity, “Great. Your father’s cursed X-chromosome with its lackluster intelligence in action. I should have married an astronaut.” Did you know the smarty pants gene is carried on the X-chromosome? So, all you brilliant boys out there…call your momma right now and thank her for being so dang smart. Girls, we can only wonder.)… Where was I? Oh yes, Welcome to the Pot-purry of Postings! Many of you NaBloPoMo groupies are theming it this month. Well, I’m taking the ‘box of chocolates’ approach. You never know what you’re gonna get (unless you cheat like I do and follow the chocolate legend under the box lid…chocolate covered caramels, I’m coming after you, you chewy little sexpots).

Today, you get….drum roll, please…dead and dying animals. Yes, the sun is shining, a mild breeze is blowing, we have an expected high today of 71 degrees F, and I want to add to the pleasantry. What says lovely day more than this?

When setting out my kitty-o-lantern on the front porch, I found this unfortunate birdie behind our *praying monk. (If you look closely, you’ll also notice a calling card from a tree removal company. We get at least 3 of these a week from different eager beavers ready to chop down our trees. It’s the hip thing to do in our neighborhood…all the cool kids are having their trees mowed down. I’m enough of a tree hugger that it saddens me to see each tree go, “Don’t you know you’re taking away our oxygen supply, you tree killers, you!?!?” E.’s parents also have a beaver complex and tour the yard with their large front beaver teeth slowly emerging at the sight of all the gnaw-worthy trees, “Ooh, we should cut down that tree, this tree, those bushes. You can visit them in the tree museum.”)

I’m not sure how the little bird man ended up in the corner of our porch. I’ve written previously about the many birds that go all kamikaze and nose dive into our windows. All have flown away minus the one fatality I witnessed. But, it’s pretty much all bricks and cement near this guy. I can’t even jokingly come up with a guess.

Birds aren’t the only wayward creatures to land belly-up in our yard. I briefly touched on this critter in an early post. E. happened upon him/her in our driveway as he was leaving for work one morning. He comes bursting in the house, “DEE, THERE’S A FETUS IN THE DRIVEWAY!!! COME SEE!!!!!” I was 15-weeks pregnant at the time. This is not exactly what a ‘15-weeks pregnant with twins’ person wants to hear first thing in the morning. Or ever really. So, I run out there without my glasses. He’s standing a couple of feet away from what looks like a jumbo pink eraser. I went back inside to fetch my glasses, and lo, it did look like a wee fetus crawling around in the driveway. My first thought (because I have slipped into imbecile status) was that a pregnant dog had been hit by a car and some cat made off with one of the puppy fetuses. You can see a couple of little nicks in his back where I’m guessing a cat or bird toted him around before leaving him as a sacrifice to the driveway gods. But, dang that’s a long tail. So, I changed my tune to possum.

Being an overemotional pregnant gal, a bit on the superstitious side at times, and, of course, compassionate to all things animal, I felt it my moral obligation to save this little guy. I cut a snippet of fleece from one of Gab’s blankets, wrapped him, and put him inside an abandoned terrarium of Gav’s (don’t ask about the frog who once called this plastic box home…it ends with more of that belly-up business). Later, Gab and I drove him out to a local wildlife rescue center and hoped for the best. We weren’t given much hope as the woman who toted him away shrugged in between bites of her sandwich, “Oh, pinkies usually don’t fare very well. Plus, with these severe injuries…oh well.” Now, I’m not a veterinarian, but I didn’t think the injuries were severe. But, I also can’t tell the difference between leave-in conditioner and hairspray these days.

I received a postcard a few weeks later notifying me of their inability to save Pinkie. We were all depressed upon hearing the news. We had envisioned visiting Pinkie at the center, watching him grow, and ultimately having him re-released in our neighborhood. [If you have a wildlife refuge center in your area, check it out. Abandoned and injured animals are nursed back to health with as little human contact as possible for eventual release back into their normal settings. Ours has many hawks, owls, vultures, birds aplenty, chipmunks, snakes, squirrels, possums,... We even saw a couple of otters when we dropped off Pinkie. Their mom had been hit by a car along with one of three pups. It's really neat to peak in on these recuperating animals. Of course, there are signs all over the place warning you to not speak nor make any loud noises as you're walking through. So, carry some duct tape with you for the kids.]

Public service announcement over.

Oh yeh, I still haven’t told you exactly what Pinkie was. I’ll let you guess, then tell you tomorrow.

What will Sunday bring? Let’s just hope no more birds decide to call it quits in my yard. I might add a weekly animal obituary to the blog.

*the praying monk- I originally purchased him to add a little peace to the place. However, hanging out on the front porch, he’s serving an excellent role as Bible-thumper deterrent.

UPDATE:  Almost 2 months later, I realized I never revealed Pinkie’s true identity.  My bad.  He was a wee little squirrel.  The animal shelter lady, after she toted Pinkie to the back of the center, mumbled to us, “Oh yeh, your possum is a squirrel.”   I’ll steer clear of the ‘Name that animal fetus’ category on Jeopardy.